A Popular History of France, from the Earliest Times, Vol. 4 of 4 (Classic Reprint)

making believe that he had given them their dismissal, and desired themto go and set about preparing, one way or another, a large armament bythe spring." The Rochellese were rejoicing over the treaty they hadjust concluded with the King of England, who promised "to aid them byland and sea, to the best of his kingly power, until he should havebrought about a fair and secure peace." The mole was every moment beingwashed away by the sea; and, "whilst the cardinal was employing all thewits which God had given him to bring to a successful issue the siege ofLa Rochelle to the glory of God and the welfare of the state, and waslaboring to that end more than the bodily strength granted to him by Godseemed to permit, one would have said that the sea and the winds,favoring the English and the islands, were up in opposition andthwarting his designs."

The king was growing tired, and wished to go to Paris; but this was notthe advice of the cardinal, and "the truths he uttered were sodispleasing to the king that he fell somehow into disgrace. The dislikethe king conceived for him was such that he found fault with him abouteverything." The king at last took his departure, and the cardinal, whohad attended him "without daring, out of respect, to take his sunshade toprotect him against the heat of the sun, which was very great that day,"was on his return taken ill with fever. "I am so downhearted that Icannot express the regret I feel at quitting the cardinal, fearing lestsome accident may happen to him," the king had said to one of hisservants: "tell him from me to take care of himself, to think what astate my affairs would be in if I were to lose him." When the kingreturned to La Rochelle on the 10th of April, he found his armystrengthened, the line of circumvallation finished, and the mole welladvanced into the sea; the assault was becoming possible, and the kingsummoned the place to surrender. [_Siege de La Rochelle. Archiveseurieuses de l'Histoire de France,_ t. iii. p. 102.] "We recognize noother sheriffs and governors than ourselves," answered the sergeant onguard to the improvised herald sent by the king; "nobody will listen toyou; away at once!" It was at last announced that the re-enforcements soimpatiently expected were coming from England. "The cardinal, who knewthat there was nothing so dangerous as to have no fear of one's enemy,had a long while before set everything in order, as if the English mightarrive any day." Their fleet was signalled at sea; it numbered thirtyvessels, and had a convoy of twenty barks laden with provisions andmunitions, and it was commanded by the Earl of Denbigh, Buckingham'sbrother-in-law. The Rochellese, transported with joy, "had planted ahost of flags on the prominent points of their town." The English cameand cast anchor at the tip of the Island of Re. The cannon of LaRochelle gave them a royal salute. A little boat with an English captainon board found means of breaking the blockade; and "Open a passage," saidthe envoy to the Rochellese, "as you sent notice to us in England, and wewill deliver you." But the progress made in the works of the molerendered the enterprise difficult; the besieged could not attemptanything; they waited and waited for Lord Denbigh to bring on anengagement; on the 19th of May, all the English ships got under sail andapproached the roads. The besieged hurried on to the ramparts; there wasthe thunder of one broadside, and one only; and then the vessels tackedand crowded sail for England, followed by the gaze "of the king's army,who returned to make good cheer without any fear of the enemy, and withgreat hopes of soon taking the town."

Great was the despair in La Rochelle: "This shameful retreat of theEnglish, and their aid which had only been received by faith, as they doin the Eucharist," wrote Cardinal Richelieu, "astounded the Rochellese somightily that they would readily have made up their minds to surrender,if Madame de Rohan, the mother, whose hopes for her children were allcentred in the preservation of this town, and the minister Salbert, avery seditious fellow, had not regaled them with imaginary succor whichthey made them hope for." The cardinal, when he wrote these words, knewnothing of the wicked proposals made to Guiton and to Salbert. "Couldn'tthe cardinal be got rid of by the deed of one determined man?" it wasasked: but the mayor refused; and, "It is not in such a way that Godwilleth our deliverance," said Salbert; "it would be too offensive to Hisholiness." And they suffered on.

Meanwhile, on the 24th of May, the posterns were observed to open, andthe women to issue forth one after another, with their children and theold men; they came gliding towards the king's encampment, but "he orderedthem to be driven back by force; and further, knowing that they had sownbeans near the counterscarps of their town, a detachment was sent out tocut them down as soon as they began to come up, and likewise a littlecorn that they had sown in some dry spots of their marshes." Louis theJust fought the Rochellese in other fashion than that in which Henry theGreat had fought the Parisians.

The misery in the place became frightful; the poor died of hunger, orwere cut down by the soldiery when they ventured upon shore at low tideto look for cockles; the price of provisions was such that the richestalone could get a little meat to eat; a cow fetched two thousand livres,and a bushel of wheat eight hundred livres. Madame de Rohan had been thefirst to have her horses killed, but this resource was exhausted, and hercook at last "left the town and allowed himself to be taken, saying thathe would rather be hanged than return to die of hunger." A rising eventook place amongst the inhabitants who were clamorous to surrender, butGuiton had the revolters hanged. "I am ready," said he, "to cast lotswith anybody else which shall live or be killed to feed his comrade withhis flesh. As long as there is one left to keep the gates shut, it isenough." The mutineers were seized with terror, and men died withoutdaring to speak. "We have been waiting three months for the effect of theexcellent letters we received from the King of Great Britain," wroteGuiton on the 24th of August, to the deputies from La Rochelle who werein London, "and, meanwhile, we cannot see by what disasters it happensthat we remain here in misery without seeing any sign of succor; our mencan do no more, our inhabitants are dying of hunger in the streets, andall our families are in a fearful state from mourning, want, andperplexity; nevertheless, we will hold out to the last day, but in God'sname delay no longer, for we perish." This letter never reached itsdestination; the watchmaker, Marc Biron; who had offered to convey it toEngland, was arrested whilst attempting to pass the royal lines, and wasimmediately hanged. La Rochelle, however, still held out. "Their rabidfury," says the cardinal, "gave them new strength, or rather the avengingwrath of God caused them to be supplied therewith in extraordinarymeasure by his evil spirit, in order to prolong their woes; they werealready almost at the end thereof, and misery found upon them no moresubstance whereon it could feed and support itself; they were skeletons,empty shadows, breathing corpses, rather than living men." At the bottomof his heart, and in spite of the ill temper their resistance caused inhim, the heroism of the Rochellese excited the cardinal's admiration.Buckingham had just been assassinated. "The king could not have lost amore bitter or a more idiotic enemy; his unreasoning enterprises endedunluckily, but they, nevertheless, did not fail to put us in great periland cause us much mischief," says Richelieu "the idiotic madness of anenemy being more to be feared than his wisdom, inasmuch as the idiot doesnot act on any principle common to other men, he attempts everything andanything, violates his own interests, and is restrained by impossibilityalone."

It was this impossibility of any aid that the cardinal attempted toimpress upon the Rochellese by means of letters which he managed to getinto the town, representing to them that Buckingham, their protector, wasdead, and that they were allowing themselves to be unjustly tyrannizedover by a small number amongst them, who, being rich, had wheat to eat,whereas, if they were good citizens, they would take their share of thegeneral misery. These manoeuvres did not remain without effect: thebesieged resolved to treat, and a deputation was just about to leave thetown, when a burgess who had broken through the lines arrived in hothaste, on his return from England; he had seen, he said, the armament allready to set out to save them or perish; it must arrive within a week;the public body of La Rochelle had promised not to treat without the Kingof England's participation; he was not abandoning his allies; and so thedeputies returned home, and there was more waiting still.

On the 29th of September, the English flag appeared before St. Martin deRe; it was commanded by the Earl of Lindsay, and was composed of ahundred and forty vessels, which carried six thousand soldiers, besidesthe crews; the French who were of the religion were in the van, commandedby the Duke of Soubise and the Count of Laval, brother of the Duke of LaTremoille, who had lately renounced his faith in front of La Rochelle,being convinced of his errors by a single lesson from the cardinal."This armament was England's utmost effort, for the Parliament which wasthen being holden had granted six millions of livres to fit it out toavenge the affronts and ignominy which the English nation had encounteredon the Island of Re, and afterwards by the shameful retreat of theirarmament in the month of May." But it was too late coming; the mole wasfinished, and the opening in it defended by two forts; and a floatingpalisade blocked the passage as well. The English sent some petardsagainst this construction, but they produced no effect; and when, nextday, they attacked the royal fleet, the French crews lost buttwenty-eight men; "the fire-ships were turned aside by men who fearedfire as little as water." Lord Lindsay retired with his squadron to theshelter of the Island of Aix, sending to the king "Lord Montagu topropose some terms of accommodation." He demanded pardon for theRochellese, freedom of conscience, and quarter for the English garrisonin La Rochelle; the answer was, "that the Rochellese were subjectss ofthe king, who knew quite well what he had to do with them, and that theKing of England had no right to interfere. As for the English, theyshould meet with the same treatment as was received by the French whomthey held prisoners." Montagu set out for England to obtain furtherorders from the king his master.

All hope of effectual aid was gone, and the Rochellese felt it; theFrench who were on board the English fleet had taken, like them, aresolution to treat; and they had already sent to the cardinal when, onthe 29th of October, the deputies from La Rochelle arrived at the camp."Your fellows who were in the English army have already obtained grace,"said the cardinal to them; and when they were disposed not to believe it,the cardinal sent for the pastors Vincent and Gobert, late delegates toKing Charles I. "they embraced with tears in their eyes, not daring tospeak of business, as they had been forbidden to do so on pain of death."

The demands of the Rochellese were more haughty than befitted theirextreme case. "Though they were but shadows of living men, and theirlife rested solely on the king's mercy, they actually dared,nevertheless, to propose to the cardinal a general treaty on behalf ofall those of their party, including Madame de Rohan and Monsieur deSoubise, the maintenance of their privileges, of their governor, and oftheir mayor, together with the right of those bearing arms to march outwith beat of drum and lighted match" [with the honors of war].

The cardinal was amused at their impudence, he writes in his _Memoires,_and told them that they had no right to expect anything more than pardon,which, moreover, they did not deserve. "He was nevertheless anxious toconclude, wishing that Montagu should find peace made, and that theEnglish fleet should see it made without their consent, which wouldrender the rest of the king's business easier, whether as regardedEngland or Spain, or the interior of the kingdom." On the 28th thetreaty, or rather the grace, was accordingly signed, "the king grantinglife and property to those of the inhabitants of the town who were thenin it, and the exercise of the religion within La Rochelle." Thesearticles bore the signature of a brigadier-general, M. de Marillac, theking not having thought proper to put his name at the bottom of aconvention made with his subjects.

Next day, twelve deputies issued from the town, making a request forhorses to Marshal de Bassompierre, whose quarters were close by, for theyhad not strength to walk. They dismounted on approaching the king'squarters, and the cardinal presented them to his Majesty. "Sir," saidthey, "we do acknowledge our crimes and rebellions, and demand mercy;promising to remain faithful for the future, if your Majesty deigns toremember the services we were able to render to the king your father."

The king gazed upon these suppliants kneeling at his feet, deputies fromthe proud city which had kept him more than a year at her gates;fleshless, almost fainting, they still bore on their features the tracesof the haughty past. They had kept the lilies of France on their walls,refusing to the last to give themselves to England. "Better surrender toa king who could take Rochelle, than to one who couldn't succor her,"said the mayor, "John Guiton, who was asked if he would not become anEnglish subject. "I know that you have always been malignants," said theking at last, "and that you have done all you could to shake off the yokeof obedience to me; I forgive you, nevertheless, your rebellions, andwill be a good prince to you, if your actions conform to yourprotestations." Thereupon he dismissed them, not without giving them adinner, and sent victuals into the town; without which, all that remainedwould have been dead of hunger within two days.

The fighting men marched out, "the officers and gentlemen wearing theirswords and the soldiery with bare (white) staff in hand," according tothe conventions; as they passed they were regarded with amazement, therenot being more than sixty-four Frenchmen and ninety English: all the resthad been killed in sorties or had died of want. The cardinal at the sametime entered this city, which he had subdued by sheer perseverance;Guiton came to meet him with six archers; he had not appeared during thenegotiations, saying that his duty detained him in the town. "Away withyou!" said the cardinal, "and at once dismiss your archers, taking carenot to style yourself mayor any more on pain of death." Guiton made noreply, and went his way quietly to his house, a magnificent dwelling tilllately, but now lying desolate amidst the general ruin. He was notdestined to reside there long; the heroic defender of La Rochelle wasobliged to leave the town and retire to Tournay-Boutonne. He returned toLa Rochelle to die, in 1656.

The king made his entry into the subjugated town on the 1st of November,1628: it was full of corpses in the chambers, the houses, the publicthoroughfares; for those who still survived were so weak that they hadnot been able to bury the dead. Madame de Rohan and her daughter, whohad not been included in the treaty, were not admitted to the honor ofseeing his Majesty. "For having been the brand that had consumed thispeople," they were sent to prison at Niort; "there kept captive, withoutexercise of their religion, and so strictly that they had but onedomestic to wait upon them, all which, however, did not take from themtheir courage or wonted zeal for the good of their party. The mothersent word to the Duke of Rohan, her son, that he was to put no faith inher letters, since she might be made to write them by force, and that noconsideration of her pitiable condition should make her flinch to theprejudice of her party, whatever harm she might be made to suffer."[_Memoires du Duc de Rohan,_ t. i. p. 395.] Worn out by so muchsuffering, the old Duchess of Rohan died in 1631 at her castle Du Pare:she had been released from captivity by the pacification of the South.

With La Rochelle fell the last bulwark of religious liberties.Single-handed, Duke Henry of Rohan now resisted at the head of a handfulof resolute men. But he was about to be crushed in his turn. Thecapture of La Rochelle had raised the cardinal's power to its height; ithad, simultaneously, been the death-blow to the Huguenot party and tothe factions of the grandees. "One of them was bold enough to say," onseeing that La Rochelle was lost, "Now we may well say that we are alllost." [_Memoires de Richelieu_]

Upper Languedoc had hitherto refused to take part in the rising, and thePrince of Conde was advancing on Toulouse when the Duke of Rohanattempted a bold enterprise against Montpellier. He believed that he wassure of his communications with the interior of the town; but when thedetachment of the advance-guard got a footing on the draw-bridge theropes that held it were cut, and "the soldiers fell into a ditch, wherethey were shot down with arquebuses, at the same time that musketryplayed upon them from without." The lieutenant fell back in all hasteupon the division of the Duke of Rohan, who retreated "to the bestVillages between Montpellier and Lunel, without ever a man fromMontpellier going out to follow and see whither he went." The war waswasting Languedoc, Viverais, and Rouergue; the Dukes of Montmorency andVentadour, under the orders of the Prince of Conde, were pursuing thetroops of Rohan in every direction; the burgesses of Montauban haddeclared for the Reformers, and were ravaging the lands of their Catholicneighbors in return for the frightful ruin everywhere caused by the royaltroops. The wretched peasantry laid the blame on the Duke of Rohan,"for one of the greatest misfortunes connected with the position ofparty-chiefs is this necessity they lie under of accounting for all theiractions to the people, that is, to a monster composed of numberlessheads, amongst which there is scarcely one open to reason." [_Memoires deMontmorency.] "Whoso has to do with a people that considers nothingdifficult to undertake, and, as for the execution, makes no sort ofprovision, is apt to be much hampered," writes the Duke of Rohan in his_Memoires_ (t. i. p. 376). It was this extreme embarrassment thatlanded him in crime. One of his emissaries, returning from Piedmont,where he had been admitted to an interview with the ambassador of Spain,made overtures to him on behalf of that power "which had an interest, hesaid, in a prolongation of the hostilities in France, so as to be able topeaceably achieve its designs in Italy. The great want of money in whichthe said duke then found himself, the country being unable to furnishmore, and the towns being unwilling to do anything further, there beingnothing to hope from England, and nothing but words without deeds havingbeen obtained from the Duke of Savoy, absolutely constrained him to findsome means of raising it in order to subsist." And so, in the followingyear, the Duke of Rohan treated with the King of Spain, who promised toallow him annually three hundred thousand ducats for the keep of histroops and forty thousand for himself. In return the duke, who lookedforward to "the time when he and his might make themselves sufficientlystrong to canton themselves and form a separate state," promised, in thatstate, freedom and enjoyment of their property to all Catholics. A pieceof strange and culpable blindness for which Rohan was to pay rightdearly.

It was in the midst of this cruel partisan war that the duke heard of thefall of La Rochelle; he could not find fault "with folks so attenuated byfamine that the majority of them could not support themselves without astick, for having sought safety in capitulation;" but to the continualanxiety felt by him for the fate of his mother and sister was addeddisquietude as to the effect that this news might produce on his troops."The people, weary of and ruined by the war, and naturally disposed to bevery easily cast down by adversity; the tradesmen annoyed at having nomore chance of turning a penny; the burgesses seeing their possessions inruins and uncultivated; all were inclined for peace at any pricewhatever." The Prince of Conde, whilst cruelly maltreating thecountries in revolt, had elsewhere had the prudence to observe somegentle measures towards the peaceable Reformers in the hope of thusproducing submission. He made this quite clear himself when writing tothe Duke of Rohan: "Sir, the king's express commands to maintain them ofthe religion styled Reformed in entire liberty of conscience have causedme to hitherto preserve those who remain in due obedience to his Majestyin all Catholic places, countries as well as towns, in entire liberty.Justice has run its free course, the worship continues everywhere, savein two or three spots where it served not for the exercise of religion,but to pave the way for rebellion. The officers who came out of rebelcities have kept their commissions; in a word, the treatment of so-styledReformers, when obedient, has been the same as that of Catholics faithfulto the king . . ." To which Henry de Rohan replied, "I confess to haveonce taken up arms unadvisedly, in so far as it was not on behalf of theaffairs of our religion, but of those of yourself personally, whopromised to obtain us reparation for the infractions of our treaties,and you did nothing of the kind, having had thoughts of peace beforereceiving news from the general assembly. Since that time everybodyknows that I have had arms in my hands only from sheer necessity, inorder to defend our properties, our lives, and the freedom of ourconsciences. I seek my repose in heaven, and God will give me grace toalways find that of my conscience on earth. They say that in this waryou have, not made a bad thing of it. This gives me some assurance thatyou will leave our poor Uvennes at peace, seeing that there are more hardknocks than pistoles to be got there." The Prince of Conde avengedhimself for this stinging reply by taking possession, in Brittany, of allthe Duke of Rohan's property, which had been confiscated, and of whichthe king had made him a present. There were more pistoles to be pickedup on the duke's estates than in the Cevennes.

The king was in Italy, and the Reformers hoped that his affairs woulddetain him there a long while; but "God, who had disposed it otherwise,breathed upon all those projects," and the arms of Louis XIII. wereeverywhere victorious; peace was concluded with Piedmont and England,without the latter treaty making any mention of the Huguenots. The kingthen turned his eyes towards Languedoc, and, summoning to him the Dukesof Montmorency and Schomberg, he laid siege to Privas. The cardinal soonjoined him there, and it was on the day of his arrival that the treatywith England was proclaimed by heralds beneath the walls. The besiegedthus learned that their powerful ally had abandoned them without reserve;at the first assault the inhabitants fled into the country, the garrisonretired within the forts, and the king's-soldiers, penetrating into thedeserted streets, were able, without resistance, to deliver up the townto pillage and flames. When the affrighted inhabitants came back bylittle and little within their walls, they found the houses confiscatedto the benefit of the king, who invited a new population to inhabitPrivas.

Town after town, "fortified Huguenot-wise," surrendered, opening to theroyal armies the passage to the Uvennes. The Duke of Rohan, who had atfirst taken position at Nimes, repaired to Anduze for the defence of themountains, the real fortress of the Reformation in Languedoc. Alaisitself had just opened its gates. Rohan saw that he could no longerimpose the duty of resistance upon a people weary of suffering, "easilybelieving ill of good folks, and readily agreeing with those whiners whoblame everything and do nothing." He sent "to the king, begging to bereceived to mercy, thinking it better to resolve on peace, whilst hecould still make some show of being able to help it, than to be forced,after a longer resistance, to surrender to the king with a rope round hisneck." The cardinal advised the king to show the duke grace, "wellknowing that, together with him individually, the other cities, whetherthey wished it or not, would be obliged to do the like, there being butlittle resolution and constancy in people deprived of leaders, especiallywhen they are threatened with immediate harm, and see no door of escapeopen."

The general assembly of the Reformers, which was then in meeting atNimes, removed to Anduze to deliberate with the Duke of Rohan; a wish wasexpressed to have the opinion of the province of the Cevennes, and allthe deputies repaired to the king's presence. No more surety-towns;fortifications everywhere razed, at the expense and by the hands of theReformers; the Catholic worship re-established in all the churches of theReformed towns; and, at this price, an amnesty granted for all acts ofrebellion, and religious liberties confirmed anew,--such were theconditions of the peace signed at Alais on the 28th of June, 1629, andmade public the following month at Nimes, under the name of Edict ofGrace. Montauban alone refused to submit to them.

The Duke of Rohan left France and retired to Venice, where his wife anddaughter were awaiting him. He had been appointed by the Venetian senategeneralissimo of the forces of the republic, when the cardinal, who hadno doubt preserved some regard for his military talents, sent him anoffer of the command of the king's troops in the Valteline. There he forseveral years maintained the honor of France, being at one time abandonedand at another supported by the cardinal, who ultimately left him to bearthe odium of the last reverse. Meeting with no response from the court,cut off from every resource, he brought back into the district of Gex theFrench troops driven out by the Grisons themselves, and then retired toGeneva. Being threatened with the king's wrath, he set out for the campof his friend Duke Bernard of Saxe-Weimar; and it was whilst fighting athis side against the imperialists that he received the wound of which hedied in Switzerland, on the 16th of April, 1638. His body was removed toGeneva amidst public mourning. A man of distinguished mind and noblecharacter, often wild in his views and hopes, and so deeply absorbed inthe interests of his party and of his church, that he had sometimes themisfortune to forget those of his country.

Meanwhile the king had set out for Paris, and the cardinal was marchingon Montauban. Being obliged to halt at Pezenas because he had a fever,he there received a deputation from Montauban, asking to have itsfortifications preserved. On the minister's formal refusal, supported bya movement in advance on the part of Marshal Bassompierre with the army,the town submitted unreservedly. "Knowing that the cardinal had made uphis mind to enter in force, they found this so bitter a pill that theycould scarcely swallow it;" they, nevertheless, offered the dais to theminister, as they had been accustomed to do to the governor, but herefused it, and would not suffer the consuls to walk on foot beside hishorse. Bassompierre set guards at the doors of the meeting-house, thatthings might be done without interruption or scandal; it was ascertainedthat the Parliament of Toulouse, "habitually intractable in all thatconcerned religion," had enregistered the edict without difficulty; thegentlemen of the neighborhood came up in crowds, the Reformers to maketheir submission and the Catholics to congratulate the cardinal; on theday of his departure the pickaxe was laid to the fortifications ofMontauban; those of Castres were already beginning to fall; and theHuguenot party in France was dead. Deprived of the political guaranteeswhich had been granted them by Henry IV., the Reformers had nothing forit but to retire into private life. This was the commencement of theirmaterial prosperity; they henceforth transferred to commerce and,industry all the intelligence, courage, and spirit of enterprise thatthey had but lately displayed in the service of their cause, on thebattle-field or in the cabinets of kings.

"From that time," says Cardinal Richelieu, "difference in religion neverprevented me from rendering the Huguenots all sorts of good offices, andI made no distinction between Frenchmen but in respect of fidelity." Agrand assertion, true at bottom, in spite of the frequent grievances thatthe Reformers had often to make the best of; the cardinal was moretolerant than his age and his servants; what he had wanted to destroy wasthe political party; he did not want to drive the Reformers to extremity,nor force them to fly the country; happy had it been if Louis XIV. couldhave listened to and borne in mind the instructions given by Richelieu toCount de Sault, commissioned to see after the application in Dauphiny ofthe edicts of pacification: "I hold that, as there is no need to extendin favor of them of the religion styled Reformed that which is providedby the edicts, so there is no ground for cutting down the favors grantedthem thereby; even now, when, by the grace of God, peace is so firmlyestablished in the kingdom, too much precaution cannot be used for theprevention of all these discontents amongst the people. I do assure youthat the king's veritable intention is to have all his subjects livingpeaceably in the observation of his edicts, and that those who haveauthority in the provinces will do him service by conforming thereto."The era of liberty passed away with Henry IV.; that of tolerance, for theReformers, began with Richelieu, pending the advent with Louis XIV. ofthe day of persecution.

CHAPTER XLI.----LOUIS XIII., CARDINAL RICHELIEU, AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS.

France was reduced to submission; six years of power had sufficed forRichelieu to obtain the mastery; from that moment he directed hisceaseless energy towards Europe. "He feared the repose of peace," saidthe ambassador Nani in his letters to Venice; "and thinking himself moresafe amidst the bustle of arms, he was the originator of so many wars,and of such long-continued and heavy calamities, he caused so much bloodand so many tears to flow within and without the kingdom, that there isnothing to be astonished at, if many people have represented him asfaithless, atrocious in his hatred, and inflexible in his vengeance.But no one, nevertheless, can deny him the gifts that this world isaccustomed to attribute to its greatest men; and his most determinedenemies are forced to confess that he had so many and such great ones,that he would have carried with him power and prosperity wherever hemight have had the direction of affairs. We may say that, having broughtback unity to divided France, having succored Italy, upset the empire,confounded England, and enfeebled Spain, he was the instrument chosen bydivine Providence to direct the great events of Europe."

The Venetian's independent and penetrating mind did not mislead him;everywhere in Europe were marks of Richelieu's handiwork. "There must beno end to negotiations near and far," was his saying: he had foundnegotiations succeed in France; he extended his views; numerous treatieshad already marked the early years of the cardinal's power; and, after1630, his activity abroad was redoubled. Between 1623 and 1642seventy-four treaties were concluded by Richelieu: four with England;twelve with the United Provinces; fifteen with the princes of Germany;six with Sweden; twelve with Savoy; six with the republic of Venice;three with the pope; three with the emperor; two with Spain; four withLorraine; one with the Grey Leagues of Switzerland; one with Portugal;two with the revolters of Catalonia and Roussillon; one with Russia; twowith the Emperor of Morocco: such was the immense network of diplomaticnegotiations whereof the cardinal held the threads during nineteenyears.

An enumeration of the alliances would serve, without further comment,to prove this: that the foreign policy of Richelieu was a continuationof that of Henry IV.; it was to Protestant alliances that he looked fortheir support in order to maintain the struggle against the house ofAustria, whether the German or the Spanish branch. In order to give hisviews full swing, he waited till he had conquered the Huguenots at home:nearly all his treaties with Protestant powers are posterior to 1630.So soon as he was secure that no political discussions in France itselfwould come to thwart his foreign designs, he marched with a firm steptowards that enfeeblement of Spain and that upsetting of the empire ofwhich Nani speaks. Henry IV. and Queen Elizabeth, pursuing the same end,had sought and found the same allies: Richelieu had the good fortune,beyond theirs, to meet, for the execution of his designs, with GustavusAdolphus, King of Sweden.

Richelieu had not yet entered the king's council (1624), when thebreaking off of the long negotiations between England and Spain, on thesubject of the marriage of the Prince of Wales with the Infanta, wasofficially declared to Parliament. At the very moment when PrinceCharles, with the Duke of Buckingham, was going post-haste to Madrid, tosee the Infanta Mary Anne of Spain, they were already thinking, at Paris,of marrying him to Henrietta of France, the king's young sister, scarcelyfourteen years of age. King James I. was at that time obstinately bentupon his plan of alliance with Spain; when it failed, his son and bigfavorite forced his hand to bring him round to France. His envoys atParis, the Earl of Carlisle and Lord Holland, found themselves confrontedby Cardinal Richelieu, commissioned, together with some of hiscolleagues, to negotiate the affair. M. Guizot, in his _Projet deMariage royal_ (1 vol. 18mo: 1863; Paris, Hachette et Cie), has saidthat the marriage of Henry IV.'s daughter with the Prince of Wales was,in Richelieu's eyes, one of the essential acts of a policy necessary tothe greatness of the kingship and of France. He obtained the bestconditions possible for the various interests involved, but without anystickling and without favor for such and such a one of these interests,skilfully adapting words and appearance, but determined upon attaininghis end.

The tarryings and miscarriages of Spanish policy had warned Richelieu tomake haste. "In less than nine moons," says James I.'s privatesecretary, James Howell, "this great matter was proposed, prosecuted, andaccomplished; whereas the sun might, for as many years, have run hiscourse from one extremity of the zodiac to the other, before the court ofSpain would have arrived at any resolution and conclusion. That gives agood idea of the difference between the two nations--the leaden step ofthe one and the quicksilver movements of the other. It also shows thatthe Frenchman is more noble in his proceedings, less full of scruple,reserve, and distrust, and that he acts more chivalrously."

In France, meanwhile, as well as in Spain, the question of religion wasthe rock of offence. Richelieu confined himself to demanding, in ageneral way, that, in this matter, the King of England should grant,in order to obtain the sister of the King of France, all that he hadpromised in order to obtain the King of Spain's. "So much was required,"he said, "by the equality of the two crowns."

The English negotiators were much embarrassed; the Protestant feelingsof Parliament had shown themselves very strongly on the subject of theSpanish marriage. "As to public freedom for the Catholic religion," saysthe cardinal, "they would not so much as hear of it, declaring that itwas a deaign, under cover of alliance, to destroy their constitution evento ask such a thing of them." "You want to conclude the marriage," saidLord Holland to the queen-mother, "and yet you enter on the same pathsthat the Spaniards took to break it off; which causes all sorts of doubtsand mistrusts, the effect whereof the premier minister of Spain, CountOlivarez, is very careful to aggravate by saying that, if the popegranted a dispensation for the marriage with France, the king his masterwould march to Rome with an army, and give it up to sack."

"We will soon stop that," answered Mary de' Medici quickly; "we will cutout work for him elsewhere." At last it was agreed that King James andhis son should sign a private engagement, not inserted in the contract ofmarriage, "securing to the English Catholics more liberty and freedom inall that concerns their religion, than they would have obtained by virtueof any articles whatsoever accorded by the marriage treaty with Spain,provided that they made sparing use of them, rendering to the King ofEngland the "obedience owed by good and true subjects; the which king,of his benevolence, would not bind them by any oath contrary to theirreligion." The promises were vague and the securities anything butsubstantial; still, the vanity as well as the fears of King James wereappeased, and Richelieu had secured, simultaneously with his ownascendency, the policy of France. Nothing remained but to send to Romefor the purpose of obtaining the dispensation. The ordinary ambassador,Count de Bethune, did not suffice for so delicate a negotiation;Richelieu sent Father Berulle. Father Berulle, founder of the brotherhoodof the Oratory, patron of the Carmelites, and the intimate friend ofFrancis de Sales, though devoid of personal ambition, had, been cleverenough to keep himself on good terms with Cardinal Richelieu, whosepolitical views he did not share, and with the court of Rome, whose mostfaithful allies, the Jesuits, he had often thwarted. He was devoted toQueen Mary de' Medici, and willingly promoted her desires in the matterof her daughter's marriage. He found the court of Rome in confusion, andmuch exercised by Spanish intrigue. "This court," he wrote to thecardinal, "is, in conduct and in principles, very different from whatone would suppose before having tried it for one's self; for my part, Iconfess to having learned more of it in a few hours, since I have been onthe spot, than I knew by all the talk that I have heard. The dialconstantly observed in this country is the balance existing betweenFrance, Italy, and Spain." "The king my master," said Count de Bethune,quite openly, "has obtained from England all he could; it is no use towait for more ample conditions, or to measure them by the Spanish ell;I have orders against sending off any courier save to give notice ofconcession of the dispensation: otherwise there would be nothing butasking one thing after another." "If we determine to act like Spain, we,like her, shall lose everything," said Father Berulle. Some weeks later,on the 6th of January, 1625, Berulle wrote to the cardinal, "For a monthI have been on the point of starting, but we have been obliged to take somuch trouble and have so many meetings on the subject of transcripts andmissives as well as the kernel of the business . . . I will merelytell you that the dispensation is pure and simple."

King James I. had died on the 6th of April, 1625; and so it was KingCharles I., and not the Prince of Wales, whom the Duke of Chevreuserepresented at Paris on the 11th of May, 1625, at the espousals ofPrincess Henrietta Maria. She set out on the 2d of June for England,escorted by the Duke of Buckingham, who had been sent by the king tofetch her, and who had gladly prolonged his stay in France, smitten as hewas by the young Queen Anne of Austria. Charles I. went to Dover to meethis wife, showing himself very amiable and attentive to her. Though shelittle knew how fatal they would be to her, the king of England's palaceslooked bare and deserted to the new queen, accustomed as she was toFrench elegance; she, however, appeared contented. "How can your Majestyreconcile yourself to a Huguenot for a husband?" asked one of her suite,indiscreetly. "Why not?" she replied, with spirit. "Was not my fatherone?"

By this speech Henrietta Maria expressed, undoubtedly without realizingall its grandeur, the idea which had suggested her marriage and beenprominent in France during the whole negotiations. It was the policy ofHenry IV. that Henry IV.'s daughter was bringing to a triumphant issue.The marriage between Henrietta Maria and Charles I., negotiated andconcluded by Cardinal Richelieu, was the open declaration of the factthat the style of Protestant or Catholic was not the supreme law ofpolicy in Christian Europe, and that the interests of nations should notremain subservient to the religious faith of the reigning or governingpersonages.

Unhappily the policy of Henry IV., carried on by Cardinal Richelieu,found no Queen Elizabeth any longer on the throne of England tocomprehend it and maintain it. Charles I., tossed about between thehaughty caprices of his favorite Buckingham and the religious orpolitical passions of his people, did not long remain attached to thegreat idea which had predominated in the alliance of the two crowns.Proud and timid, imperious and awkward, all at the same time, he did notsucceed, in the first instance, in gaining the affections of his youngwife, and early infractions of the treaty of marriage; the dismissal ofall the queen's French servants, hostilities between the merchant naviesof the two nations, had for some time been paving the way for open war,when the Duke of Buckingham, in the hope of winning back to him the Houseof Commons (June, 1626), madly attempted the expedition against theIsland of Re. What was the success of it, as well as of the two attemptsthat followed it, has already been shown.

Three years later, on the 24th of April, 1629, the King of Englandconcluded peace with France without making any stipulation in favor ofthe Reformers whom hope of aid from him had drawn into rebellion. "Ideclare," says the Duke of Rohan, "that I would have suffered any sort ofextremity rather than be false to the many sacred oaths we had given himnot to listen to any treaty without him, who had many times assured usthat he would never make peace without including us in it." The Englishaccepted the peace "as the king had desired, not wanting the King ofGreat Britain to meddle with his rebellious Huguenot subjects any morethan he would want to meddle with his Catholic subjects if they were torebel against him." [_Memoires de Richelieu,_ t. iv. p. 421.] Thesubjects of Charles I. were soon to rebel against him: and France kepther word and did not interfere.

The Hollanders, with more prudence and ability than distinguishedBuckingham and Charles I., had done better service to the Protestantcause without ever becoming entangled in the quarrels that dividedFrance; natural enemies as they were of Spain and the house of Austria,they readily seconded Richelieu in the struggle he maintained againstthem; besides, the United Provinces were as yet poor, and the cardinalalways managed to find money for his allies; nearly all the treaties heconcluded with Holland were treaties of alliance and subsidy; those of1641 and 1642 secured to them twelve hundred thousand livres a year outof the coffers of France. Once only the Hollanders were faithless totheir engagements: it was during the siege of Rochelle, when the nationalfeeling would not admit of war being made on the French Huguenots. Allthe forces of Protestantism readily united against Spain; Richelieu hadbut to direct them. She, in fact, was the great enemy, and herhumiliation was always the ultimate aim of the cardinal's foreign policy;the struggle, power to power, between France and Spain, explains, duringthat period, nearly all the political and military complications inEurope. There was no lack of pretexts for bringing it on. The first wasthe question of the Valteline, a lovely and fertile valley, which,extending from the Lake of Como to the Tyrol, thus serves as a naturalcommunication between Italy and Germany. Possessed but lately, as itwas, by the Grey Leagues of the Protestant Swiss, the Valteline, aCatholic district, had revolted at the instigation of Spain in 1620; theemperor, Savoy, and Spain had wanted to divide the spoil between them;when France, the old ally of the Grisons, had interfered, and, in 1623,the forts of the Valteline had been intrusted on deposit to the pope,Urban VIII. He still retained them in 1624, when the Grison lords,seconded by a French re-enforcement under the orders of the Marquis ofCeeuvres, attacked the feeble garrison of the Valteline; in a few daysthey were masters of all the places in the canton; the pope sent hisnephew, Cardinal Barberini, to Paris to complain of French aggression,and with a proposal to take the sovereignty of the Valteline from theGrisons; that was, to give it to Spain. "Besides," said CardinalRichelieu, "the precedent and consequences of it would be perilous forkings in whose dominions it hath pleased God to permit diversity ofreligion." The legate could obtain nothing. The Assembly of Notables,convoked by Richelieu in 1625, approved of the king's conduct, and warwas resolved upon. The siege of La Rochelle retarded it for two years;Richelieu wanted to have his hands free; he concluded a specious peacewith Spain, and the Valteline remained for the time being in the hands ofthe Grisons, who were one day themselves to drive the French out of it.Whilst the cardinal was holding La Rochelle besieged, the Duke of Mantuahad died in Italy, and his natural heir, Charles di Gonzaga, who wassettled in France with the title of Duke of Nevers, had hastened to puthimself in possession of his dominions. Meanwhile the Duke of Savoyclaimed the marquisate of Montferrat; the Spaniards supported him; theyentered the-dominions of the Duke of Mantua, and laid siege to Casale.When La Rochelle succumbed, Casale was still holding out; but the Duke ofSavoy had already made himself master of the greater part of Montferrat;the Duke of Mantua claimed the assistance of the King of France, whosesubject he was; here was a fresh battle-field against Spain; and scarcelyhad he been victorious over the Rochellese, when the king was on themarch for Italy. The Duke of Savoy refused a passage to the royal army,which found the defile of Suza Pass fortified with three barricades.

[Illustration: The Defile of Suza Pass----278]

Marshal Bassompierre went to the king, who was a hundred paces behind thestorming party, ahead of his regiment of guards. "'Sir,' said he, 'thecompany is ready, the violins have come in,'and the masks are at thedoor; when your Majesty pleases, we will commence the ballet.' 'The kingcame up to me, and said to me angrily, "Do you know, pray, that we havebut five hundred pounds of lead in the park of artillery?" 'I said tohim, 'It is a pretty time to think of that. Must the ballet not dance,for lack of one mask that is not ready? Leave it to us, sir, and allwill go well.' "Do you answer for it?" said he to me. 'Sir,' replied.the cardinal, 'by the marshal's looks I prophesy that all will be well;rest assured of it.'" [_Memoires de Bassompiere._] The French dashedforward, the marshals with the storming party, and the barricades weresoon carried. The Duke of Savoy and his son had hardly time to fly."Gentlemen," cried the Duke to some Frenchmen, who happened to be in hisservice, "gentlemen, allow me to pass; your countrymen are in a temper."

With the same dash, on debouching from the mountains, the king's troopsentered Suza. The Prince of Piedmont soon arrived to ask for peace; hegave up all pretensions to Montferrat, and promised to negotiate with theSpanish general to get the siege of Casale raised; and the effect wasthat, on the 18th of March, Casale, delivered "by the mere wind of therenown gained by the king's arms, saw, with tears of joy, the Spaniardsretiring desolate, showing no longer that pride which they had been wontto wear on their faces,--looking constantly behind them, not so much fromregret for what they were leaving as for fear lest the king's vengefulsword should follow after them, and come to strike their death-blow."[_Memoires de Richelieu,_ t. iv. p. 370.]

The Spaniards remained, however, in Milaness, ready to burst again uponthe Duke of Mantua. The king was in a hurry to return to France in orderto finish the subjugation of the Reformers in the south, commanded by theDuke of Rohan. The cardinal placed little or no reliance upon the Dukeof Savoy, whose "mind could get no rest, and going more swiftly than therapid movements of the heavens, made every day more than twice thecircuit of the world, thinking how to set by the ears all kings, princes,and potentates, one with another, so that he alone might reap advantagefrom their divisions. [_Memoires de Richelieu,_ t. iv. p. 375.] Aleague, however, was formed between France, the republic of Venice, theDuke of Mantua, and the Duke of Savoy, for the defence of Italy in caseof fresh aggression on the part of the Spaniards; and the king, who hadjust concluded peace with England, took the road back to France.Scarcely had the cardinal joined him before Privas when an imperialistarmy advanced into the Grisons, and, supported by the celebrated Spanishgeneral Spinola, laid siege to Mantua. Richelieu did not hesitate: heentered Piedmont in the month of March, 1630, to march before long onPignerol, an important place commanding the passage of the Alps; it, aswell as the citadel, was carried in a few days; the governor having askedfor time to "do his Easter" (take the sacrament), Marshal Crequi, who wasafraid of seeing aid arrive from the Duke of Savoy, had all the clocks inthe town put on, to such purpose that the governor had departed and theplace was in the hands of the French when the re-enforcements came up.The Duke of Savoy was furious, and had the soldiers who surrenderedPignerol cut in pieces.

The king had put himself in motion to join his army. "The Frenchnoblesse," said Spinola, "are very fortunate in seeing themselves honoredby the presence of the king their master amongst their armies; I havenothing to regret in my life but never to have seen the like on the partof mine." This great general had resumed the siege of Casale when LouisXIII. entered Savoy; the inhabitants of Chambery opened their gates tohim; Annecy and Montmelian succumbed after a few days' siege; Mauriennein its entirety made its submission, and the king fixed his quartersthere, whilst the cardinal pushed forward to Casale with the main body ofthe army. Rejoicings were still going on for a success gained beforeVeillane over the troops of the Duke of Savoy, when news arrived of thecapture of Mantua by the Imperialists. This was the finishing blow tothe ambitious and restless spirit of the Duke of Savoy. He saw Mantua inthe hands of the Spaniards, "who never give back aught of what falls intotheir power, whatever justice and the interests of alliance may makebinding on them;" it was all hope lost of an exchange which might havegiven him back Savoy; he took to his bed and died on the 26th of July,1630, telling his son that peace must be made on any terms whatever."By just punishment of God, he who, during forty or fifty years of hisreign, had constantly tried to set his neighbors a-blaze, died amidst theflames of his own dominions, which he had lost by his own obstinacy,against the advice of his friends and his allies."

The King of France, in ill health, had just set out for Lyons; andthither the cardinal was soon summoned, for Louis XIII. appeared to bedying. When he reached convalescence, the truce suspending hostilitiessince the death of the Duke of Savoy was about to expire; MarshalSchomberg was preparing to march on the enemy, when there was broughtto him a treaty, signed at Ratisbonne, between the emperor and theambassador of France, assisted by Francis du Tremblay, now known asFather Joseph, perhaps the only friend and certainly the most intimateconfidant of the cardinal, who always employed him on delicate or secretbusiness.

[Illustration: Richelieu and Father Joseph----280]

But Marshal Schomberg was fighting against Spain; he did not allowhimself to be stopped by a treaty concluded with the emperor, andspeedily found himself in front of Casale. The two armies were alreadyface to face, when there was seen coming out of the intrenchments anofficer in the pope's service, who waved a white handkerchief; he cameup to Marshal Schomberg, and was recognized as Captain Giulio Mazarini,often employed on the nuncio's affairs; he brought word that theSpaniards would consent to leave the city, if, at the same time, theFrench would evacuate the citadel. Spinola was no longer there to make agood stand before the place; he had died a month previously, complainingloudly that his honor had been filched from him; and, determined not toyield up his last breath in a town which would have to be abandoned, hehad caused himself to be removed out of Casale, to go and die in aneighboring castle.

Casale evacuated, the cardinal broke out violently against thenegotiators of Ratisbonne, saying that they had exceeded their powers,and declaring that the king regarded the treaty as null and void; therewas accordingly a recommencement of negotiations with the emperor as wellas the Spaniards.

It was only in the month of September, 1631, that the states of Savoy andMantua were finally evacuated by the hostile troops. Pignerol had beengiven up to the new Duke of Savoy, but a secret agreement had beenentered into between that prince and France: French soldiers remainedconcealed in Pignerol; and they retook possession of the place in thename of the king, who had purchased the town and its territory, to securehimself a passage into Italy. The Spaniards, when they bad news of it,made so much the more uproar as they had the less foreseen it, and as itcut the thread of all the enterprises they were meditating againstChristendom. The affairs of the emperor in Germany were in too bad astate for him to rekindle war, and France kept Pignerol. The house ofAustria, in fact, was threatened mortally. For two years CardinalRichelieu had been laboring to carry war into its very heart. FerdinandII. had displeased many electors of the empire, who began to bedisquieted at the advances made by his power. "It is, no doubt, a greataffliction for the Christian commonwealth," said the cardinal to theGerman princes, "that none but the Protestants should dare to oppose suchpernicious designs; they must not be aided in their enterprises againstreligion, but they must be made use of in order to maintain Germany inthe enjoyment of her liberties." The Catholic league in Germany,habitually allied as it was with the house of Austria, did not offer anyleader to take the field against her. The King of Denmark, after a longperiod of hostilities, had just made peace with the emperor; and, "intheir need, all these offended and despoiled princes looked, as sailorslook to the north," towards the King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus.

[Illustration: Gustavus Adolphus----282]

"The King of Sweden was a new rising sun, who, having been at war withall his neighbors, had wrested from them several provinces; he was young,but of great reputation, and already incensed against the emperor, not somuch on account of any real injuries he had received from him as becausehe was his neighbor. His Majesty had kept an eye upon him with a view ofattempting to make use of him in order to draw off, in course of time,the main body of the emperor's forces, and give him work to do in his owndominions." [_Memoires de Richelieu,_ t. v. p. 119.] ThroughRichelieu's good offices, Gustavus Adolphus had just concluded a longtruce with the Poles, with whom he had been for some time at war: thecardinal's envoy, M. de Charnace, at once made certain propositions tothe King of Sweden, promising the aid of France if he would take up thecause of the German princes; but Gustavus turned a cold ear to theseovertures, "not seeing in any quarter any great encouragement toundertake the war, either in England, peace with the Spaniards beingthere as good as determined upon, or in Holland, for the same reason,or in the Hanseatic towns, which were all exhausted of wealth, or inDenmark, which had lost heart and was daily disarming, or in France,whence he got not a word on which he could place certain reliance." Theemperor, on his side, was seeking to make peace with Sweden, "and thepeople of that country were not disinclined to listen to him."

God, for the accomplishment of his will, sets at nought the designs andintentions of men. Gustavus Adolphus was the instrument chosen byProvidence to finish the work of Henry IV. and Richelieu. Negotiationscontinued to be carried on between the two parties, but, before hisalliance with France was concluded, the King of Sweden, taking a suddenresolution, set out for Germany, on the 30th of May, 1630, with fifteenthousand men, "having told Charnace that he would not continue the warbeyond that year, if he did not agree upon terms of treaty with the king;so much does passion blind us," adds the cardinal, "that he thought it tobe in his power to put an end to so great a war as that, just as it hadbeen in his power to commence it."

By this time Gustavus Adolphus was in Pomerania, the duke whereof,maltreated by the emperor, admitted him on the 10th of July into Stettin,after a show of resistance. The Imperialists, in their fury, put to acruel death all the inhabitants of the said city who happened to be intheir hands, and gave up all its territory to fire and sword. "The Kingof Sweden, on the contrary, had his army in such discipline, that itseemed as if every one of them were living at home, and not amongststrangers; for in the actions of this king there was nothing to be seenbut inexorable severity towards the smallest excesses on the part of hismen, extraordinary gentleness towards the populations, and strict justiceon every occasion, all which conciliated the affections of all, and somuch the more in that the emperor's army, unruly, insolent, disobedientto its leaders, and full of outrage against the people, made theirenemy's virtues shine forth the brighter." [_Memoires de Richelieu,_t. vi. p. 419.]

Gustavus Adolphus had left Sweden under the impulse of love for thoseglorious enterprises which make great generals, but still more of adesire to maintain the Protestant cause, which he regarded as that ofGod. He had assembled the estates of Sweden in the castle of Stockholm,presenting to them his daughter Christina, four years old, whom heconfided to their faithful care. "I have hopes," he said to them, "ofending by bringing triumph to the cause of the oppressed; but, as thepitcher that goes often to the well gets broken, so I fear it may be myfate. I who have exposed my life amidst so many dangers, who have sooften spilt my blood for the country, without, thanks to God, having beenwounded to death, must in the end make a sacrifice of myself; for thatreason I bid you farewell, hoping to see you again in a better world."He continued advancing into Germany. "This snow king will go on meltingas he comes south," said the emperor, Ferdinand, on hearing that GustavusAdolphus had disembarked; but Mecklenburg was already in his hands, andthe Elector of Brandenburg had just declared in his favor: he everywheremade proclamation, "that the inhabitants were to come forward and joinhim to take the part of their princes, whom he was coming to replace inpossession." He was investing all parts of Austria, whose hereditarydominions he had not yet attacked; it was in the name of the empire thathe fought against the emperor.

The diet was terminating at Ratisbonne, and it had just struck a fatalblow at the imperial cause. The electors, Catholic and Protestant,jealous of the power as well as of the glory of the celebratedWallenstein, creator and commander-in-chief of the emperor's army, whohad made him Duke of Friedland, and endowed him with the duchies ofMecklenburg, had obliged Ferdinand II. to withdraw from him the commandof the forces. At this price he had hoped to obtain their votes todesignate his son King of the Romans; the first step towards hereditaryempire had failed, thanks to the ability of Father Joseph. "This poorCapuchin has disarmed me with his chaplet," said the emperor, "and forall that his cowl is so narrow he has managed to get six electoral hatsinto it." The treaty he had concluded, disavowed by France, did not foran instant hinder the progress of the King of Sweden; and the cardinallost no time in letting him know that "the king's intention was in nowise to abandon him, but to assist him more than ever, insomuch as hedeemed it absolutely necessary in order to thwart the designs of thosewho had no end in view but their own augmentation, to the prejudice ofall the other princes of Europe." On the 25th of January, 1631, atBernwald, the treaty of alliance between France and Sweden was finallysigned. Baron Charnace had inserted in the draft of the treaty the termprotection as between France and Gustavus Adolphus. "Our master asks forno protection but that of Heaven, said the Swedish plenipotentiaries;"after God, his Majesty holds himself indebted only to his sword and hiswisdom for any advantages he may gain." Charnace did not insist; and thevictories of Gustavus Adolphus were an answer to any difficulties.

The King of Sweden bound himself to furnish soldiers,--thirty thousandmen at the least; France was to pay, by way of subsidy, four hundredthousand crowns a year, and to give a hundred thousand crowns to coverpast expenses. Gustavus Adolphus promised to maintain the existingreligion in such countries as he might conquer, "though he said,laughingly, that there was no possibility of promising about that, exceptin the fashion of him who sold the bear's skin;" he likewise guaranteedneutrality to the princes of the Catholic league, provided that theyobserved it towards him. The treaty was made public at once, through theexertions of Gustavus Adolphus, though Cardinal Richelieu had chargedCharnace to keep it secret for a time.

Torquato Conti, one of the emperor's generals, who had takenWallenstein's place, wished to break off warfare during the long frosts."My men do not recognize winter," answered Gustavus Adolphus. "Thisprince, who did not take to war as a pastime, but made it in order toconquer," marched with giant strides across Germany, reducing everythingas he went. He had arrived, by the end of April, before Frankfurt-on-theOder, which he took; and he was preparing to succor Magdeburg, which hadearly pronounced for him, and which Tilly, the emperor's general, keptbesieged. The Elector of Saxony hesitated to take sides; he refusedGustavus Adolphus a passage over the bridge of Dessau, on the Elbe. Onthe 20th of May Magdeburg fell, and Tilly gave over the place to thesoldiery; thirty thousand persons were massacred, and the housescommitted to the flames. "Nothing like it has been seen since the takingof Troy and of Jerusalem," said Tilly in his savage joy. The Protestantprinces, who had just been reconstituting the Evangelical Union, in thediet they had held in February at Leipzig, revolted openly, orderinglevies of soldiers to protect their territories; the Catholic League,renouncing neutrality, flew to arms on their side; the question becamenothing less than that of restoring to the Protestants all that had beengranted them by the peace of Passau. The soldiery of Tilly were alreadylet loose on electoral Saxony; the elector, constrained by necessity,intrusted his soldiers to Gustavus Adolphus, who had just receivedre-enforcements from Sweden, and the king marched against Tilly, stillencamped before Leipzig, which he had forced to capitulate.

The Saxons gave way at the first shock of the imperial troops, but theKing of Sweden had dashed forward, and nothing could withstand him; Tillyhimself, hitherto proof against lead and steel, fell wounded in threeplaces; five thousand dead were left on the field of battle; and GustavusAdolphus dragged at his heels seven thousand prisoners. "Never did thegrace of God pull me out of so bad a scrape," said the conqueror. Hehalted some time at Mayence, which had just opened its gates to him.Axel Oxenstiern, his most faithful servant and oldest friend, whoseintimacy with his royal master reminds one of that between Henry IV. andSully, came to join him in Germany; he had hitherto been commissioned tohold the government of the conquests won from the Poles. He did notapprove of the tactics of Gustavus Adolphus, who was attacking theCatholic League, and meanwhile leaving to the Elector of Saxony thecharge of carrying the war into the hereditary dominions of Austria.. . . "Sir," said he, "I should have liked to offer you myfelicitations on your victories, not at Mayence, but at Vienna." "If,after the battle of Leipzig, the King of Sweden had gone straight toattack the emperor in his hereditary provinces, it had been all over withthe house of Austria," says Cardinal Richelieu; "but either God did notwill the certain destruction of that house, which would perhaps have beentoo prejudicial to the Catholic religion, and he turned him aside fromthe counsel which would have been more advantageous for him to take, orthe same God, who giveth not all to any, but distributeth his giftsdiversely to each, had given to this king, as to Hannibal, the knowledgehow to conquer, but not how to use victory."

Gustavus Adolphus had resumed his course of success: he came up withTilly again on the Leek, April 10, 1632, and crushed his army; thegeneral was mortally wounded, and the King of Sweden, entering Augsburgin triumph, proclaimed religious liberty there. He had moved forward infront of Ingolstadt, and was making a reconnoissance in person. "A kingis not worthy of his crown who makes any difficulty about carrying itwherever a simple soldier can go," he said. A cannon-ball carried offthe hind quarters of his horse and threw him down. He picked himself up,all covered with blood and mud. "The fruit is not yet ripe," he cried,with that strange mixture of courage and fatalism which so oftencharacterizes great warriors; and he marched to Munich, on which heimposed a heavy war-contribution. The Elector of Bavaria, stronglyfavored by France, sought to treat in the name of the Catholic League;but Gustavus Adolphus required complete restitution of all territorieswrested from the Protestant princes, the withdrawal of the troopsoccupying the dominions of the evangelicals, and the absolute neutralityof the Catholic princes. "These conditions smacked rather of yourvictorious prince, who would lay down and not accept the law." Hesummoned to him all the inhabitants of the countries he traversed inconqueror's style: _"Surgite d mortuis,"_ he said to the Bavarians, _"etvenite ad judieium" (Rise from the dead, and come to judgment)_.Protestant Suabia had declared for him, and Duke Bernard of Saxe-Weimar,one of his ablest lieute ants, carried the Swedish arms to the very banksof the Lake of Constance. The Lutheran countries of Upper Austria hadtaken up arms; and Switzerland had permitted the King of Sweden torecruit on her territory. "Italy began to tremble," says CardinalRichelieu; "the Genevese themselves were fortifying their town, and, tosee them doing so, it seemed as if the King of Sweden were at theirgates; but God had disposed it otherwise."

The Emperor Ferdinand had recalled the only general capable of making astand against Gustavus Adolphus. Wallenstein, deeply offended, had fora long while held out; but, being assured of the supreme command over thefresh army which Ferdinand was raising in all directions, he took thefield at the end of April, 1632. Wallenstein effected a junction withthe Elector of Bavaria, forcing Gustavus Adolphus back, little by little,on Nuremberg. "I mean to show the King of Sweden a new way of makingwar," said the German general. The sufferings of his army in anintrenched camp soon became intolerable to Gustavus Adolphus. In spiteof inferiority of forces, he attacked the enemy's redoubts, and wasrepulsed; the king revictualled Nuremberg, and fell back upon Bavaria.Wallenstein at first followed him, and then flung himself upon Saxony,and took Leipzig; Gustavus Adolphus advanced to succor his ally, and thetwo armies met near the little town of Liitzen, on the 16th of November,1632.

There was a thick fog. Gustavus Adolphus, rising before daybreak, wouldnot put on his breastplate, his old wounds hurting him under harness:"God is my breastplate," he said. When somebody came and asked him forthe watchword, he answered, "God with us;" and it was Luther's hymn,_"Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" (Our God is a strong tower),_ that theSwedes sang as they advanced towards the enemy. The king had givenorders to march straight on Lutzen. "He animated his men to the fight,"says Richelieu, "with words that he had at command, whilst Wallenstein,by his mere presence and the sternness of his silence, seemed to let hismen understand that, as he had been wont to do, he would reward them orchastise them, according as they did well or ill on that great day."

It was ten A. M., and the fog had just lifted; six batteries of cannonand two large ditches defended the Imperialists; the artillery from theramparts of Liitzen played upon the king's army, the balls came whizzingabout him; Bernard of Saxe-Weimar was the first to attack, pushingforward on Liitzen, which was soon taken; Gustavus Adolphus marched on tothe enemy's intrenchments; for an instant the Swedish infantry seemed towaver; the king seized a pike and flung himself amidst the ranks. "Aftercrossing so many rivers, scaling so many walls, and storming so manyplaces, if you have not courage enough to defend yourselves, at leastturn your heads to see me die," he shouted to the soldiers. Theyrallied: the king remounted his horse, bearing along with him a regimentof Smalandaise cavalry. "You will behave like good fellows, all of you,"he said to them, as he dashed over the two ditches, carrying, as he went,two batteries of the enemy's cannon. "He took off his hat and renderedthanks to God for the victory He was giving him."

Two regiments of Imperial cuirassiers rode up to meet him; the kingcharged them at the head of his Swedes; he was in the thickest of thefight; his horse received a ball through the neck; Gustavus had his armbroken; the bone came through the sleeve of his coat; he wanted to haveit attended to, and begged the Duke of Saxe-Altenburg to assist him inleaving the battle-field; at that very moment, Falkenberg, lieutenant-colonel in the Imperial army, galloped his horse on to the king and shothim, point-blank, in the back with a pistol. The king fell from hishorse; and Falkenberg took to flight, pursued by one of the king'ssquires, who killed him. Gustavus Adolphus was left alone with a Germanpage, who tried to raise him; the king could no longer speak; threeAustrian cuirassiers surrounded him, asking the page the name of thewounded man; the youngster would not say, and fell, riddled with wounds,on his master's body; the Austrians sent one more pistol-shot into thedying man's temple, and stripped him of his clothes, leaving him only hisshirt. The melley recommenced, and successive charges of cavalry passedover the hero's corpse; there were counted nine open wounds and thirteenscars on his body when it was recovered towards the evening.

[Illustration: Death of Gustavus and his Page----290]

One of the king's officers, who had been unable to quit the fight intime to succor him, went and announced his fall to Duke Bernard ofSaxe-Weimar. To him a retreat was suggested; but, "We mustn't think ofthat," said he, "but of death or victory." A lieutenant-colonel of acavalry regiment made some difficulty about resuming the attack: the dukepassed his sword through his body, and, putting himself at the head ofthe troops, led them back upon the enemy's intrenchments which he carriedand lost three times. At last he succeeded in turning the cannon uponthe enemy, and "that gave the turn to the victory, which, nevertheless,was disputed till night."

"It was one of the most horrible ever heard of," says Cardinal Richelieu;"six thousand dead or dying were left on the field of battle, where DukeBernard encamped till morning."

When day came, he led the troops off to Weisenfeld. The army knewnothing yet of the king's death. The Duke of Saxe-Weimar had the bodybrought to the front. "I will no longer conceal from you," he said, "themisfortune that has befallen us; in the name of the glory that you havewon in following this great prince, help me to exact vengeance for it,and to let all the world see that he commanded soldiers who rendered himinvincible, and, even after his death, the terror of his enemies." Ashout arose from the host, "We will follow you whither you will, even tothe end of the earth."

"Those who look for spots on the sun, and find something reprehensibleeven in virtue itself, blame this king," says Cardinal Richelieu,"for having died like a trooper; but they do not reflect that allconqueror-princes are obliged to do not only the duty of captain, but ofsimple soldier, and to be the first in peril, in order to lead theretothe soldier who would not run the risk without them. It was the casewith Caesar and with Alexander, and the Swede died so much the moregloriously than either the one or the other, in that it is more becomingthe condition of a great captain and a conqueror to die sword in hand,making a tomb for his body of his enemies on the field of battle, than tobe hated of his own and poniarded by the hands of his nearest anddearest, or to die of poison or of drowning in a wine-butt."

Just like Napoleon in Egypt and Italy, Gustavus Adolphus, had performedthe prelude, by numerous wars against his neighbors, to the grandenterprise which was to render his name illustrious. Vanquished in hisstruggle with Denmark in 1613, he had carried war into Muscovy, conqueredtowns and provinces, and as early as 1617 he had effected the removal ofthe Russians from the shores of the Baltic. The Poles made a pretence ofsetting their own king, Sigismund, upon the throne of Sweden; and foreighteen years Gustavus Adolphus had bravely defended his rights, andprotected and extended his kingdom up to the truce of Altenmarket,concluded in 1629 through the intervention of Richelieu, who had need ofthe young King of Sweden in order to oppose the Emperor Ferdinand and thedangerous power of the house of Austria. Summoned to Germany by theProtestant princes who were being oppressed and despoiled, and assured ofassistance and subsidies from the King of France, Gustavus Adolphus had,no doubt, ideas of a glorious destiny, which have been flippantly taxedwith egotistical ambition. Perhaps, in the noble joy of victory, when he"was marching on without fighting," seeing provinces submit, one afteranother, without his being hardly at the pains to draw his sword, mighthe have sometimes dreamed of a Protestant empire and the imperial crownupon his head; but, assuredly, such was not the aim of his enterprise andof his life. "I must in the end make a sacrifice of myself," he had saidon bidding farewell to the Estates of Sweden; and it was to the cause ofProtestantism in Europe that he made this sacrifice. Sincerely religiousin heart, Gustavus Adolphus was not ignorant that his principal politicalstrength was in the hands of the Protestant princes; and he put at theirservice the incomparable splendor of his military genius. In two yearsthe power of the house of Austria, a work of so many efforts and so manyyears, was shaken to its very foundations. The evangelical union ofProtestant princes was re-forming in Germany, and treating, as equal withequal, with the emperor; Ferdinand was trembling in Vienna, and theSpaniards, uneasy even in Italy, were collecting their forces to makehead against the irresistible conqueror, when the battle-field of Lutzensaw the fall, at thirty years of age, of the "hero of the North, thebulwark of Protestantism," as he was called by his contemporaries,astounded at his greatness. God sometimes thus cuts off His noblestchampions in order to make men see that He is master, and He aloneaccomplishes His great designs; but to them whom He deigns to thus employHe accords the glory of leaving their imprint upon the times they havegone through and the events to which they have contributed. Two years ofvictory in Germany at the head of Protestantism sufficed to make the nameof Gustavus Adolphus illustrious forever.

Richelieu had continued the work of Henry IV.; and Chancellor Oxenstierndid not leave to perish that of his master and friend. Scarcely wasGustavus Adolphus dead when Oxenstiern convoked at Erfurt the deputiesfrom the Protestant towns, and made them swear the maintenance of theunion. He afterwards summoned to Heilbronn all the Protestant princes;the four circles of Upper Germany (Franconia, Suabia, the Palatinate, andthe Upper Rhine), and the elector of Brandenburg alone sent theirrepresentatives; but Richelieu had delegated M. de Feuquieres, whoquietly brought his weight to bear on the decision of the assembly, andgot Oxenstiern appointed to direct the Protestant party; the Elector ofSaxony, who laid claim to this honor, was already leaning towards thetreason which he was to consummate in the following year; France at thesame time renewed her treaty with Sweden and Holland; the great generalof the armies of the empire, Wallenstein, displeased with his master, wasmaking secret advances to the cardinal and to Oxenstiern; wherever he didnot appear in person the Imperial armies were beaten. The emperor wasjust having his eyes opened, when Wallenstein, summoning around him atPilsen his generals and his lieutenants, made them take an oath ofconfederacy for the defence of his person and of the army, and, beggingBernard of Saxe-Weimar and the Saxon generals to join him in Bohemia, hewrote to Feuquieres to accept the king's secret offers.

Amongst the generals assembled at Pilsen there happened to be MaxPiccolomini, in whom Wallenstein had great confidence: he at oncerevealed to the emperor his generalissimo's guilty intrigues.Wallenstein fell, assassinated by three of his officers, on the 15th ofFebruary, 1634; and the young King of Hungary, the emperor's eldest son,took the command-in chief of the army under the direction of the veterangenerals of the empire. On the 6th of September, by one of thosereversals which disconcert all human foresight, Bernard of Saxe-Weimarand the Swedish marshal, Horn, coming up to the aid of Nordlingen, whichwas being besieged by the Austrian army, were completely beaten in frontof that place; and their army retired in disorder, leaving Suabia to theconqueror. Protestant Germany was in consternation; all eyes were turnedtowards France.

Cardinal Richelieu was ready; the frequent treasons of Duke Charles ofLorraine had recently furnished him with an opportunity, whilst directingthe king's arms against him, of taking possession, partly by negotiationand partly by force, first of the town of Nancy, and then of the duchy ofBar; the duke had abdicated in favor of the cardinal, his brother, who,renouncing his ecclesiastical dignity, espoused his cousin, PrincessClaude of Lorraine, and took refuge with her at Florence, whilst Charlesled into Germany, to the emperor, all the forces he had remaining. Theking's armies were coming to provisionally take possession of all theplaces in Lothringen, where the Swedes, beaten in front of Nordlingen,being obliged to abandon the left bank of the Upper Rhine, placed in thehands of the French the town of Philipsburg, which they had but latelytaken from the Spaniards. The Rhinegrave Otto, who was commanding inElsass for the confederates, in the same way effected his retreat,delivering over to Marshal La Force Colmar, Schlestadt, and many smallplaces; the Bishop of Basle and the free city of Mulhausen likewiseclaimed French protection.

On the 1st of November, the ambassadors of Sweden and of the ProtestantLeague signed at Paris a treaty of alliance, soon afterwards ratified bythe diet at Worms, and the French army, entering Germany, under MarshalsLa Force and Breze, caused the siege of Heidelberg to be raised on the23d of December. Richelieu was in treaty at the same time with theUnited Provinces for the invasion of the Catholic Low Countries. It wasin the name of their ancient liberties that the cardinal, in alliancewith the heretics of Holland, summoned the ancient Flanders to revoltagainst Spain; if they refused to listen to this appeal, the confederateswere under mutual promises to divide their conquest between them. Franceconfined herself to stipulating for the maintenance of the Catholicreligion in the territory that devolved to Holland. The army destinedfor this enterprise was already in preparation, and the king was settingout to visit it, when, in April, 1635, he was informed of ChancellorOxenstiern's arrival. Louis XIII. awaited him at Compiegne. Thechancellor was accompanied by a numerous following, worthy of the man whoheld the command of a sovereign over the princes of the ProtestantLeague; he had at his side the famous Hugo Grotius, but lately exiledfrom his country on account of religious disputes, and now accredited asambassador to the King of France from the little queen, Christina ofSweden. It was Grotius who acted as interpreter between the king and thechancellor of Sweden. A rare and grand spectacle was this interviewbetween, on the one side, the Swede and the Hollander, both of them greatpolitical philosophers in theory or practice, and, on the other, theall-powerful minister of the King of France, in presence of that kinghimself. When Oxenstiern and Richelieu conferred alone together, the twoministers had recourse to Latin, that common tongue of the cultivatedminds of their time, and nobody was present at their conversation.Oxenstiern soon departed for Holland, laden with attentions and presents:he carried away with him a new treaty of alliance between Sweden andFrance, and the assurance that the king was about to declare war againstSpain.

And it broke out, accordingly, on the 19th of May, 1635. The violationof the electorate of Treves by the Cardinal Infante, and the carrying-offof the elector-archbishop served as pretext; and Louis XIII. declaredhimself protector of a feeble prince who had placed in his hands thecustody of several places. Alencon, herald-at-arms of France, appearedat Brussels, proclamation of war in hand; and, not be able to obtain aninterview with the Cardinal Infante, he hurled it at the feet of theBelgian herald-at-arms commissioned to receive him, and he affixed a copyof it to a post he set up in the ground in the last Flemish village, nearthe frontier. On the 6th of June, a proclamation of the king's summonedthe Spanish Low Countries to revolt. A victory had already been gainedin Luxembourg, close to the little town of Avein, over Prince Thomas ofSavoy, the duke-regnant's brother, who was embroiled with him, and whomSpain had just taken into her service. The campaign of 1635 appeared tobe commencing under happy auspices. These hopes were deceived; the LowCountries did not respond to the summons of the king and of hisconfederates; there was no rising anywhere against the Spanish yoke;traditional jealousy of the heretics of Holland prevented the Flandersfrom declaring for France; it was necessary to undertake a conquestinstead of fomenting an insurrection. The Prince of Orange was advancingslowly into Germany; the Elector of Saxony had treated with the emperor,and several towns were accepting the peace concluded between them atPrague; Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, supported by Cardinal Valette, at thehead of French troops, had been forced to fall back to Metz in order toprotect Lothringen and Elsass. In order to attach this great general tohimself forever, the king had just ceded to Duke Bernard the landgravateof Elsass, hereditary possession, as it was, of the house of Austria.The Prince of Conde was attacking Franche-Comte; the siege of Dole wasdragging its slow length along, when the emperor's most celebratedlieutenants, John van Weert and Piccolomini, who had formed a junction inBelgium, all at once rallied the troops of Prince Thomas, and, advancingrapidly towards Picardy, invaded French soil at the commencement of July,1636. La Capelle and Le Catelet were taken by assault, and theImperialists laid siege to Corbie, a little town on the Somme fourleagues from Amiens.

Great was the terror at Paris, and, besides the terror, the rage; thecardinal was accused of having brought ruin upon France; for a moment theexcitement against him was so violent that his friends were disquieted byit: he alone was unmoved. The king quitted St. Germain and returned toParis, whilst Richelieu, alone, without escort, and with his horses at awalk, had himself driven to the Hotel de Ville right through the mob intheir fury. "Then was seen," says Fontenay-Mareuil, "what can be done bya great heart (vertu), and how it is revered even of the basest souls,for the streets were so full of folks that there was hardly room to pass,and all so excited that they spoke of nothing but killing him: as soon asthey saw him approaching, they all held their peace or prayed God to givehim good speed, that he might be able to remedy the evil which wasapprehended."

On the 15th of August, Corbie surrendered to the Spaniards, who crossedthe Somme, wasting the country behind them; but already alarm had givenplace to ardent desire for vengeance; the cardinal had thought ofeverything and provided for everything: the bodies corporate, from theParliament to the trade-syndicates, had offered the king considerablesums; all the gentlemen and soldiers unemployed had been put on theactive list of the army; and the burgesses of Paris, mounting in throngsthe steps of the Hotel de Ville, went and shook hands with the veteranMarshal La Force, saying, "Marshal, we want to make war with you." Theywere ordered to form the nucleus of the reserve army which was to protectParis. The Duke of Orleans took the command of the army assembled atCompiegne, at the head of which the Count of Soissons already was; thetwo princes advanced slowly; they halted two days to recover the littlefortress of Roze; the Imperialists fell back; they retired into Artois;they were not followed, and the French army encamped before Corbie.

Winter was approaching; nobody dared to attack the town; the cardinal hadno confidence in either the Duke of Orleans or the Count of Soissons. Hewent to Amiens, whilst the king established his headquarters at thecastle of Demuin, closer to Corbie. Richelieu determined to attack thetown by assault; the trenches were opened on the 5th of November; on the10th the garrison parleyed; on the 14th the place was surrendered. "I amvery pleased to send you word that we have recovered Corbie," wroteVoiture to one of his friends, very hostile to the cardinal [_OEuvres deVoiture,_ p. 175]: "the news will astonish you, no doubt, as well as allEurope; nevertheless, we are masters of it. Reflect, I beg you, what hasbeen the end of this expedition which has made so much noise. Spain andGermany had made for the purpose their supremest efforts. The emperorhad sent his best captains and his best cavalry. The army of Flandershad given its best troops. Out of that is formed an army of twenty-fivethousand horse, fifteen thousand foot, and forty cannon. This cloud, bigwith thunder and lightning, comes bursting over Picardy, which it findsunsheltered, our arms being occupied elsewhere. They take, first of all,La Capelle and Le Catelet; they attack, and in nine days take, Corbie;and so they are masters of the river; they cross it, and they lay wasteall that lies between the Somme and the Oise. And so long as there is noresistance, they valiantly hold the country, they slay our peasants andburn our villages; but, at the first rumor that reaches them to theeffect that Monsieur is advancing with an army, and that the king isfollowing close behind him, they intrench themselves behind Corbie; and,when they learn that there is no halting, and that the march against themis going on merrily, our conquerors abandon their intrenchments. Andthese determined gentry, who were to pierce France even to the Pyrenees,who threatened to pillage Paris, and recover there, even in Notre-Dame,the flags of the battle of Avein, permit us to effect the circumvallationof a place which is of so much importance to them, give us leisure toconstruct forts, and, after that, let us attack and take it by assaultbefore their very eyes. Such is the end of the bravadoes of Piccolomini,who sent us word by his trumpeters to say, at one time, that he wished wehad some powder, and, at another, that we had some cavalry coming, and,when we had both one and the other, he took very good care to wait forus. In such sort, sir, that, except La Capelle and Le Catelet, which areof no consideration, all the flash made by this grand and victorious armyhas been the capture of Corbie, only to give it up again and replace itin the king's hands, together with a counterscarp, three bastions, andthree demilunes, which it did not possess. If they had taken ten more ofour places with similar success, our frontier would be in all the bettercondition for it, and they would have fortified it better than those whohitherto have had the charge of it. . . . Was it not said that weshould expend before this place many millions of gold and many millionsof men with a chance of taking it, perhaps, in three years? Yet, whenthe resolution was taken to attack it by assault, the month of Novemberbeing well advanced, there was not a soul but cried out. The bestintentioned avowed that it showed blindness, and the rest said that wemust be afraid lest our soldiers should not die soon enough of misery andhunger, and must wish to drown them in their own trenches. As for me,though I knew the inconveniencies which necessarily attend siegesundertaken at this season, I suspended my judgment; for, sooth to say, wehave often seen the cardinal out in matters that he has had done byothers, but we have never yet seen him fail in enterprises that he hasbeen pleased to carry out in person and that he has supported by hispresence. I believed, then, that he would surmount all difficulties; andthat he who had taken La Rochelle in spite of Ocean, would certainly takeCorbie too in spite of Winter's rains. . . . You will tell me, thatit is luck which has made him take fortresses without ever havingconducted a siege before, which has made him, without any experience,command armies successfully, which has always led him, as it were, by thehand, and preserved him amidst precipices into which he had thrownhimself, and which, in fact, has often made him appear bold, wise, andfar-sighted: let us look at him, then, in misfortune, and see if he hadless boldness, wisdom, and far sightedness. Affairs were not going overwell in Italy, and we had met with scarcely more success before Dole.When it was known that the enemy had entered Picardy, that all is a-flameto the very banks of the Oise, everybody takes fright, and the chief cityof the realm is in consternation. On top of that come advices fromBurgundy that the siege of Dole is raised, and from Saintonge that thereare fifteen thousand peasants revolted, and that there is fear lestPoitou and Guienne may follow this example. Bad news comes thickly, thesky is overcast on all sides, the tempest beats upon us in alldirections, and from no quarter whatever does a single ray of goodfortune shine upon us. Amidst all this darkness, did the cardinal seeless clearly? Did he lose his head during all this tempest? Did he notstill hold the helm in one hand, and the compass in the other? Did hethrow himself into the boat to save his life? Nay, if the great ship hecommanded were to be lost, did he not show that he was ready to diebefore all the rest? Was it luck that drew him out of this labyrinth,or was it his own prudence, steadiness, and magnanimity? Our enemies arefifteen leagues from Paris, and his are inside it. Every day comeadvices that they are intriguing there to ruin him. France and Spain,so to speak, have conspired against him alone. What countenance was keptamidst all this by the man who they said would be dumbfounded at theleast ill-success, and who had caused Le Havre to be fortified in orderto throw himself into it at the first misfortune? He did not make asingle step backward all the same. He thought of the perils of thestate, and not of his own; and the only change observed in him allthrough was that, whereas he had not been wont to go out but with anescort of two hundred guards, he walked about, every day, attended bymerely five or six gentlemen. It must be owned that adversity borne withso good a grace and such force of character is worth more than a greatdeal of prosperity and victory. To me he did not seem so great and sovictorious on the day he entered La Rochelle as then; and the journeys hemade from his house to the arsenal seem to me more glorious for him thanthose which he made beyond the mountains, and from which he returned withthe triumphs of Pignerol and Suza."

This was Cardinal Richelieu's distinction, that all his contemporaries,in the same way as Voiture, identified the mishaps and the successes oftheir country with his own fortunes, and that upon him alone were fixedthe eyes of Europe, whether friendly or hostile, when it supported orwhen it fought against France.

For four years the war was carried on with desperation by land and sea inthe Low Countries, in Germany, and in Italy, with alternations of successand reverse. The actors disappeared one after another from the scene;the emperor, Ferdinand II., had died on the 15th of February, 1637;--theelection of his son, Ferdinand III., had not been recognized by Franceand Sweden; Bernard of Saxe-Weimar succumbed, at thirty-four years ofage, on the 15th of July, 1639, after having beaten, in the precedingyear, the celebrated John van Weert, whom he sent a prisoner to Paris.At his death the landgravate of Elsass reverted to France, together withthe town of Brisach, which he had won from the Imperialists.

The Duke of Savoy had died in 1637; his widow, Christine of France,daughter of Henry IV., was, so far as her brother's cause in Italy wasconcerned, but a poor support; but Count d'Harcourt, having succeeded, ashead of the army, Cardinal Valette, who died in 1638, had retaken Turinand Casale from the Imperialists in the campaign of 1640; two yearslater, in the month of June, 1642, the Princes Thomas and Maurice,brothers-in-law of the Duchess Christine, wearied out by the maladdressand haughtiness of the Spaniards, attached themselves definitively to theinterests of France, drove out the Spanish garrisons from Nice and Ivrea,in concert with the Duke of Longueville, and retook the fortress ofTortona as well as all Milaness to the south of the Po. Perpignan,besieged for more than two years past by the king's armies, capitulatedat the same moment. Spain, hard pressed at home by the insurrection ofthe Catalans and the revolt of Portugal at the same time, both supportedby Richelieu, saw Arras fall into the hands of France (August 9, 1640),and the plot contrived with the Duke of Bouillon and the Count ofSoissons fail at the battle of La Marfee, where this latter prince waskilled on the 16th of July, 1641. In Germany, Marshal Guebriant and theSwedish general Torstenson, so paralyzed that he had himself carried in alitter to the head of his army, had just won back from the empireSilesia, Moravia, and nearly all Saxony; the chances of war wereeverywhere favorable to France, a just recompense for the indomitableperseverance of Cardinal Richelieu through good and evil fortune. "Thegreat tree of the house of Austria was shaken to its very roots, and hehad all but felled that trunk which with its two branches covers theNorth and the West, and throws a shadow over the rest of the earth."[_Lettres de Malherbe,_ t. iv.] The king, for a moment shaken in hisfidelity towards his minister by the intrigues of Cinq-Mars, had returnedto the cardinal with all the impetus of the indignation caused by theguilty treaty made by his favorite with Spain. All Europe thought as theyoung captain in the guards, afterwards Marshal Fabert, who, when theking said to him, "I know that my army is divided into two factions,royalists and cardinalists; which are you for?" answered, "Cardinalists,sir, for the cardinal's party is yours." The cardinal and France weretriumphing together, but the conqueror was dying; Cardinal Richelieu hadjust been removed from Ruel to Paris.

For several months past, the cardinal's health, always precarious, hadtaken a serious turn; it was from his sick-bed that he, a prey to cruelagonies, directed the movements of the army, and, at the same time, theprosecution of Cinq-Mars. All at once his chest was attacked; and thecardinal felt that he was dying. On the 2d of December, 1642, publicprayers were ordered in all the churches; the king went from St. Germainto see his minister. The cardinal was quite prepared. "I have thissatisfaction," he said, "that I have never deserted the king, and that Ileave his kingdom exalted, and all his enemies abased." He commended hisrelatives to his Majesty, "who on their behalf will remember myservices;" then, naming the two secretaries of state, Chavigny and DeNoyers, he added, "Your Majesty has Cardinal Mazarin; I believe him to becapable of serving the king." And he handed to Louis XIII. aproclamation which he had just prepared for the purpose of excludingthe Duke of Orleans from any right to the regency in case of the king'sdeath. The preamble called to mind that the king had five times alreadypardoned his brother, recently engaged in a new plot against him.

The king had left the cardinal, but without returning to St. Germain. Heremained at the Louvre. Richelieu had in vain questioned the physiciansas to how long he had to live. One, only, dared to go beyond commonplacehopes. "Monsignor," he said, "in twenty-four hours you will be dead orcured." "That is the way to speak!" said the cardinal; and he sent forthe priest of St. Eustache, his parish. As they were bringing into hischamber the Holy Eucharist, he stretched out his hand, and, "There," saidhe, "is my Judge before whom I shall soon appear; I pray him with all myheart to condemn me if I have ever had any other aim than the welfare ofreligion and of the state." The priest would have omitted certaincustomary questions, but, "Treat me as the commonest of Christians," saidthe cardinal. And when he was asked to pardon his enemies, "I never hadany but those of the state," answered the dying man.

The cardinal's family surrounded his bed; and the attendance wasnumerous. The Bishop of Lisieux, Cospdan, a man of small wits, but ofsincere devoutness, listened attentively to the firm speech, the calmdeclarations, of the expiring minister. "So much self-confidence appallsme," he said below his breath. Richelieu died as he had lived, withoutscruples and without delicacies of conscience, absorbed by his great aim,and but little concerned about the means he had employed to arrive at it."I believe, absolutely, all the truths taught by the church," he had saidto his confessor, and this faith sufficed for his repose. The memory ofthe scaffolds he had caused to be erected did not so much as recur to hismind. "I have loved justice, and not vengeance. I have been severetowards some in order to be kind towards all," he had said in his will,written in Latin. He thought just the same on his death-bed.

The king left him, not without emotion and regret. The cardinal beggedMadame d'Aiguillon, his niece, to withdraw. "She is the one whom I haveloved most," he said. Those around him were convulsed with weeping. ACarmelite whom he had sent for turned to those present, and, "Let those,"he said, "who cannot refrain from showing the excess of their weeping andtheir lamentation leave the room; let us pray for this soul." Inpresence of the majesty of death and eternity human grandeur disappearsirrevocably; the all-powerful minister was at that moment only this soul.A last gasp announced his departure; Cardinal Richelieu was dead.

He was dead, but his work survived him. On the very evening of the 3d ofDecember, Louis XIII. called to his council Cardinal Mazarin; and nextday he wrote to the Parliaments and governors of provinces, "God havingbeen pleased to take to himself the Cardinal de Richelieu, I haveresolved to preserve and keep up all establishments ordained during hisministry, to follow out all projects arranged with him for affairs abroadand at home, in such sort that there shall not be any change. I havecontinued in my councils the same persons as served me then, and I havecalled thereto Cardinal Mazarin, of whose capacity and devotion to myservice I have had proof, and of whom I feel no less sure than if he hadbeen born amongst my subjects." Scarcely had the most powerful kingsyielded up their last breath, when their wishes had been at onceforgotten: Cardinal Richelieu still governed in his grave.

[Illustration: The Palais-Cardinal----305]

The king had distributed amongst his minister's relatives the offices anddignities which he had left vacant; the fortune that came to them wasenormous; the legacies left to mere domestics amounted to more than threehundred thousand-livres. During his lifetime Richelieu had given to thecrown "my grand hotel, which I built, and called Palais-de-Cardinal, mychapel (or chapel-service) of gold, enriched with diamonds, my grandbuffet of chased silver, and a large diamond that I bought of Lopez." Inhis will he adds, "I most humbly beseech his Majesty to think proper tohave placed in his hands, out of the coined gold and silver that I haveat my decease, the sum of fifteen hundred thousand livres, of which sumI can truly say that I made very good use for the great affairs of hiskingdom, in such sort, that if I had not had this money at my disposal,certain matters which have turned out well would have, to allappearances, turned out ill; which gives me ground for daring to beseechhis Majesty to destine this sum, that I leave him, to be employed ondivers occasions which cannot abide the tardiness of financial forms."

The minister and priest who had destroyed the power of the grandees inFrance had, nevertheless, the true instinct respecting the perpetuationof families. "Inasmuch as it hath pleased God," he says in his will,"to bless my labors, and make them considered by the king, my kindmaster, showing recognition of them by his royal munificence, beyond whatI could hope for, I have esteemed it a duty to bind my heirs to preservethe estate in my family, in such sort that it may maintain itself for along while in the dignity and splendor which it hath pleased the king toconfer upon it, in order that posterity may know that, as I served himfaithfully, he, by virtue of a complete kingliness, knew what love toshow me, and how to load me with his benefits."

The cardinal had taken pleasure in embellishing the estate of Richelieu,in Touraine, where he was born, and which the king had raised to aduchy-peerage. Mdlle. de Montpensier, in her _Memoires,_ gives anaccount of a visit she paid to it in her youth. "I passed," she says,"along a very fine street of the town, all the houses of which are in thebest style of building, one like another, and quite newly made, which isnot to be wondered at. MM. de Richelieu, though gentlemen of goodstanding, had never built a town; they had been content with theirvillage and with a mediocre house. At the present time it is the mostbeautiful and most magnificent castle you could possibly see, and all theornament that could be given to a house is found there. This will not bedifficult to believe if one considers that it is the work of the mostambitious and most ostentatious man in the world, premier minister ofstate too, who for a long while possessed absolute authority overaffairs. It is, nevertheless, inconceivable that the apartments shouldcorrespond so ill in size with the beauty of the outside. I hear thatthis arose from the fact that the cardinal wished to have the chamberpreserved in which he was born. To adjust the house of a simplegentleman to the grand ideas of the most powerful favorite there has everbeen in France, you will observe that the architect must have beenhampered; accordingly he did not see his way to planning any but verysmall quarters, which, by way of recompense, as regards gilding orpainting, lack no embellishment inside.

"Amidst all that modern invention has employed to embellish it, there areto be seen, on the chimney-piece in a drawingroom, the arms of CardinalRichelieu, just as they were during the lifetime of his father, which thecardinal desired to leave there, because they comprise a collar of theHoly Ghost, in order to prove to those who are wont to misrepresent theorigin of favorites that he was born a gentleman of a good house. Inthis point, he imposed upon nobody."

The castle of Richelieu is well nigh destroyed; his family, after fallinginto poverty, is extinct; the Palais-Cardinal has assumed the name ofPalais-Royal; and pure monarchy, the aim of all his efforts and the workof his whole life, has been swept away by the blast of revolution. Ofthe cardinal there remains nothing but the great memory of his power andof the services he rendered his country. Evil has been spoken, with goodreason, of glory; it lasts, however, more durably than material successeseven when they rest on the best security. Richelieu had no conception ofthat noblest ambition on which a human soul can feed, that of governing afree country, but he was one of the greatest, the most effective, and theboldest, as well as the most prudent servants that France ever had.

Cardinal Richelieu gave his age, whether admirers or adversaries, theidea which Malherbe expressed in a letter to one of his friends: "Youknow that my humor is neither to flatter nor to lie; but I swear to youthat there is in this man a something which surpasses humanity, and thatif our bark is ever to outride the tempests, it will be whilst thisglorious hand holds the rudder. Other pilots diminish my fear, this onemakes me unconscious of it. Hitherto, when we had to build anew orrepair some ruin, plaster alone was put in requisition. Now we seenothing but marble used; and, whilst the counsels are judicious andfaithful, the execution is diligent and magnanimous. Wits, judgment, andcourage never existed in any man to the degree that they do in him. Asfor interest, he knows none but that of the public. To that he clingswith a passion so unbridled, if I may dare so to speak, that the visibleinjury it does his constitution is not capable of detaching him from it.Sees he anything useful to the king's service, he goes at it withoutlooking to one side or the other. Obstacles tempt him, resistance piqueshim, and nothing that is put in his way diverts him; the disregard heshows of self, and of all that touches himself, as if he knew no sort ofhealth or disease but the health or disease of the state, causes all goodmen to fear that his life will not be long enough for him to see thefruit of what he plants; and moreover, it is quite evident that what heleaves undone can never be completed by any man that holds his place.Why, man, he does a thing because it has to be done! The space betweenthe Rhine and the Pyrenees seems to him not field enough for the liliesof France. He would have them occupy the two shores of theMediterranean, and waft their odors thence to the extremest countries ofthe Orient. Measure by the extent of his designs the extent of hiscourage." [Letters to Racan and to M. de Mentin. _OEuvres de Malherbe,_t. iv.]

[Illustration: The Tomb of Richelieu----308]

The cardinal had been barely four months reposing in that chapel of theSorbonne which he had himself repaired for the purpose, and already KingLouis XIII. was sinking into the tomb. The minister had died atfifty-seven, the king was not yet forty-two; but his always languishinghealth seemed unable to bear the burden of affairs which had been butlately borne by Richelieu alone. The king had permitted his brother toappear again at court. "Monsieur supped with me," says Mdlle. deMontpensier, "and we had the twenty-four violins; he was as gay as ifMM. Cinq-Mars and De Thou had not tarried by the way. I confess that Icould not see him without thinking of them, and that in my joy I feltthat his gave me a pang." The prisoners and exiles, by degrees,received their pardon; the Duke of Vendome, Bassompierre, and MarshalVitry had been empowered to return to their castles, the Duchess ofChevreuse and the ex-keeper of the seals, Chateauneuf, were aloneexcepted from this favor. "After the peace," said the declarationtouching the regency, which the king got enregistered by the Parliamenton the 23d of April. The little dauphin, who had merely been sprinkled,had just received baptism in the chapel of the Castle of St. Germain.The king asked him, next day, if he knew what his name was. "My name isLouis XIV.," answered the child. "Not yet, my son, not yet," said theking, softly.

Louis XIII. did not cling to life: it had been sad and burdensome to himby the mere fact of his own melancholy and singular character, not thatGod had denied him prosperity or success. He had the windows opened ofhis chamber in the new castle of St. Germain looking towards the Abbey ofSt. Denis, where he had, at last, just laid the body of the queen hismother, hitherto resting at Cologne. "Let me see my last resting-place,"he said to his servants. The crowd of courtiers thronged to the oldcastle, inhabited by the queen; visits were made to the new castle to seethe king, who still worked with his ministers; when he was alone, "he wasseen nearly always with his eyes open towards heaven, as if he talkedwith God heart to heart." [_Memoires sur la Mort de Louis XIII.,_ by hisvalet-de-chambre Dubois; _Archives curieuses,_ t. v. p. 428.] On the23d of April, it was believed that the last moment had arrived: the kingreceived extreme unction; a dispute arose about the government ofBrittany, given by the king to the Duke of La Meilleraye and claimed bythe Duke of Vendome; the two claimants summoned their friends; the queentook fright, and, being obliged to repair to the king, committed theimprudence of confiding her children to the Duke of Beaufort, Vendome'seldest son, a young scatter-brain who made a great noise about thisfavor. The king rallied and appeared to regain strength. He wassometimes irritated at sight of the courtiers who filled his chamber."Those gentry," he said to his most confidential servants, "come to seehow soon I shall die. If I recover, I will make them pay dearly fortheir desire to have me die." The austere nature of Louis XIII. wasawakened again with the transitory return of his powers; the severitiesof his reign were his own as much as Cardinal Richelieu's.

He was, nevertheless, dying, asking God for deliverance. It wasThursday, May 14. "Friday has always been my lucky day," said LouisXIII.: "on that day I have undertaken assaults that I have carried; Ihave even gained battles: I should have liked to die on a Friday." Hisdoctors told him that they could find no more pulse; he raised his eyesto heaven and said out loud, "My God, receive me to mercy!" andaddressing himself to all, he added, "Let us pray!" Then, fixing hiseyes upon the Bishop of Meaux, he said, "You will, of course, see whenthe time comes for reading the agony prayers; I have marked them all."Everybody was praying and weeping; the queen and all the court werekneeling in the king's chamber. At three o'clock, he softly breathed hislast, on the sane day and almost at the same moment at which his fatherhad died beneath the dagger of Ravaillac, thirty-three years before.

France owed to Louis XIII. eighteen years of Cardinal Richelieu'sgovernment; and that is a service which she can never forget. "Theminister made his sovereign play the second part in the monarchy and thefirst in Europe," said Montesquieu: "he abased the king, but he exaltedthe reign." It is to the honor of Louis XIII. that he understood andaccepted the position designed for him by Providence in the government ofhis kingdom, and that he upheld with dogged fidelity a power which oftengalled him all the while that it was serving him.

CHAPTER XIII.----LOUIS XIII., RICHELIEU, AND LITERATURE.

Cardinal Richelieu was dead, and "his works followed him," to use thewords of Holy Writ. At home and abroad, in France and in Europe, he hadto a great extent continued the reign of Henry IV., and had completelycleared the way for that of Louis XIV. "Such was the strength andsuperiority of his genius that he knew all the depths and all themysteries of government," said La Bruyere in his admission-speech beforethe French Academy; "he was regardful of foreign countries, he kept inhand crowned heads, he knew what weight to attach to their alliance;with allies he hedged himself against the enemy. . . . And, can youbelieve it, gentlemen? this practical and austere soul, formidable to theenemies of the state, inexorable to the factious, overwhelmed innegotiations, occupied at one time in weakening the party of heresy, atanother in breaking up a league, and at another in meditating a conquest,found time for literary culture, and was fond of literature and of thosewho made it their profession!" From inclination and from personalinterest therein this indefatigable and powerful mind had courtedliterature; he had foreseen its nascent power; he had divined in theliterary circle he got about him a means of acting upon the whole nation;he had no idea of neglecting them; he did not attempt to subjugate themopenly; he brought them near to him and protected them. It is one ofRichelieu's triumphs to have founded the French Academy.

We must turn back for a moment and cast a glance at the intellectualcondition which prevailed at the issue of the Renaissance and theReformation.

For sixty years a momentous crisis had been exercising language andliterature as well as society in France. They yearned to get out of it.Robust intellectual culture had, ceased to be the privilege of theerudite only; it began to gain a footing on the common domain; people nolonger wrote in Latin, like Erasmus; the Reformation and the Renaissancespoke French. In order to suffice for this change, the language wastaking form; everybody had lent a hand to the work; Calvin with hisChristian Institutes (_Institution Chretienne_) at the same time asRabelais with his learned and buffoonish romance, Ramus with hisDialectics, and Bodin with his Republic, Henry Estienne with his essaysin French philology, as well as Ronsard and his friends by theirclassical crusade. Simultaneously with the language there was beingcreated a public intelligent, inquiring, and eager. Scarcely had thetranslation of Plutarch by Amyot appeared, when it at once became, asMontaigne says, "the breviary of women and of ignoramuses." "God's life,my love," wrote Henry IV. to Mary de' Medici, "you could not have sent meany more agreeable news than of the pleasure you have taken in reading.Plutarch has a smile for me of never-failing freshness; to love him is tolove me, for he was during a long while the instructor of my tender age;my good mother, to whom I owe everything, and who set so great store onmy good deportment, and did not want me to be (that is what she used tosay) an illustrious ignoramus, put that book into my hands, though I wasthen little more than a child at the breast. It has been like myconscience to me, and has whispered into my ear many good hints andexcellent maxims for my behavior and for the government of my affairs."

Thanks to Amyot, Plutarch "had become a Frenchman:" Montaigne would nothave been able to read him easily in Greek. Indifferent to theReformation, which was too severe and too affirmative for him, Montaigne,"to whom Latin had been presented as his mother-tongue, rejoiced in theRenaissance without becoming a slave to it, or intoxicated with it likeRabelais or Ronsard. "The ideas I had naturally formed for myself aboutman," he says, "I confirmed and fortified by the authority of others andby the sound examples of the ancients, with whom I found my judgment inconformity." Born in 1533, at the castle of Montaigne in Perigord, andcarefully brought up by "the good father God had given him," Michael deMontaigne was, in his childhood, "so heavy, lazy, and sleepy, that hecould not be roused from sloth, even for the sake of play." He passedseveral years in the Parliament of Bordeaux, but "he had never taken aliking to jurisprudence, though his father had steeped him in it, whenquite a child, to his very lips, and he was always asking himself whycommon language, so easy for every other purpose, becomes obscure andunintelligible in a contract or will, which made him fancy that the menof law had muddled everything in order to render themselves necessary."He had lost the only man he had ever really loved, Stephen de la Boetie,an amiable and noble philosopher, counsellor in the Parliament ofBordeaux. "If I am pressed to declare why I loved him," Montaigne usedto say, "I feel that it can only be expressed by answering, because hewas he, and I was I." Montaigne gave up the Parliament, and travelled inSwitzerland and Italy, often stopping at Paris, and gladly returning tohis castle of Montaigne, where he wrote down what he had seen; "hungeringfor self-knowledge," inquiring, indolent, without ardor for work, anenemy of all constraint, he was at the same time frank and subtle,gentle, humane, and moderate. As an inquiring spectator, withoutpersonal ambition, he had taken for his life's motto, "Who knows? (Quesais-je?)" Amidst the wars of religion he remained without political orreligious passion. "I am disgusted by novelty, whatever aspect it mayassume, and with good reason," he would say, "for I have seen some verydisastrous effects of it." Outside as well as within himself, Montaignestudied mankind without regard to order and without premeditated plan."I have no drill-sergeant to arrange my pieces (of writing) savehap-hazard only," he writes; "just as my ideas present themselves, I heapthem together; sometimes they come rushing in a throng, sometimes theystraggle single file. I like to be seen at my natural and ordinary pace,all a-hobble though it be; I let myself go, just as it happens. Theparlance I like is a simple and natural parlance, the same on paper as inthe mouth, a succulent and a nervous parlance, short and compact, not somuch refined and finished to a hair as impetuous and brusque, difficultrather than wearisome, devoid of affectation, irregular, disconnected,and bold, not pedant-like, not preacher-like, not pleader-like." Thatfixity which Montaigne could not give to his irresolute and doubtful mindhe stamped upon the tongue; it came out in his Essays supple, free, andbold; he had made the first decisive step towards the formation of thelanguage, pending the advent of Descartes and the great literature ofFrance.

The sixteenth century began everything, attempted everything; itaccomplished and finished nothing; its great men opened the road of thefuture to France; but they died without having brought their work wellthrough, without foreseeing that it was going to be completed. TheReformation itself did not escape this misappreciation and discouragementof its age; and nowhere do they crop out in a more striking manner thanin Montaigne. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Rabelais is asatirist and a cynic, he is no sceptic; there is felt circulating throughhis book a glowing sap of confidence and hope; fifty years later,Montaigne, on the contrary, expresses, in spite of his happy nature,in vivid, picturesque, exuberant language, only the lassitude of anantiquated age. Henry IV. was still disputing his throne with the Leagueand Spain. Several times, amidst his embarrassments and his wars, theking had manifested his desire to see Montaigne; but the latter was ill,and felt "death nipping him continually in the throat or the reins." Andhe died, in fact, at his own house, on the 13th of September, 1592,without having had the good fortune to see Henry IV. in peaceablepossession of the kingdom which was destined to receive from him,together with stability and peace, a return of generous hope. All thewriters of mark in the reign of Henry IV. bear the same imprint; they allyearn to get free from the chaos of those ideas and sentiments which thesixteenth century left still bubbling up. In literature as well as inthe state, one and the same need of discipline and unity, one universalthirst for order and peace was bringing together all the intellects andall the forces which were but lately clashing against and hampering oneanother; in literature, as well as in the state, the impulse, everywheregreat and effective, proceeded from the king, without pressure or effort."Make known to Monsieur de Geneve," said Henry IV. to one of the friendsof St. Francis de Sales, "that I desire of him a work to serve as amanual for all persons of the court and the great world, withoutexcepting kings and princes, to fit them for living Christianly eachaccording to their condition. I want this manual to be accurate,judicious, and such as any one can make use of." St. Francis de Salespublished, in 1608, the _Introduction to a Devout Life,_ a delightful andcharming manual of devotion, more stern and firm in spirit than in form,a true Christian regimen softened by the tact of a delicate and acuteintellect, knowing the world and its ways. "The book has surpassed myhope," said Henry IV. The style is as supple, the fancy as rich, asMontaigne's; but scepticism has given place to Christianism; St. Francisde Sales does not doubt, he believes; ingenious and moderate withal, heescapes out of the controversies of the violent and the incertitudes ofthe sceptics. The step is firm, the march is onward towards theseventeenth century, towards the reign of order, rule, and method.

The vigorous language and the beautiful arrangement in the style of themagistrates had already prepared the way for its advent. Descartes wasthe first master of it and its great exponent.

[Illustration: Descartes at Amsterdam----316]

Never was any mind more independent in voluntary submission to aninexorable logic. Rene Descartes, who was born at La Haye, near Tours,in 1596, and died at Stockholm in 1650, escaped the influence ofRichelieu by the isolation to which he condemned himself, as well as bythe proud and somewhat uncouth independence of his character. Engagingas a volunteer, at one and twenty, in the Dutch army, he marched overGermany in the service of several princes, returned to France, where hesold his property, travelled through the whole of Italy, and ended, in1629, by settling himself in Holland, seeking everywhere solitude androom for his thoughts. "In this great city of Amsterdam, where I amnow," he wrote to Balzac, "and where there is not a soul, except myself,that does not follow some commercial pursuit, everybody is so attentiveto his gains, that I might live there all my life without being noticedby anybody. I go walking every day amidst the confusion of agreat people with as much freedom and quiet as you could do in yourforest-alleys, and I pay no more attention to the people who pass beforemy eyes than I should do to the trees that are in your forests and to theanimals that feed there. Even the noise of traffic does not interrupt myreveries any more than would that of some rivulet." Having devotedhimself for a long time past to the study of geometry and astronomy, hecomposed in Holland his Treatise on the World (_Traite du Monde_). "Ihad intended to send you my _World_ for your New Year's gift," he wroteto the learned Minime, Father Mersenne, who was his best friend; "but Imust tell you that, having had inquiries made, lately, at Leyden and atAmsterdam, whether Galileo's system of the world was to be obtainedthere, word was sent me that all the copies of it had been burned atRome, and the author condemned to some fine, which astounded me somightily that I almost resolved to burn all my papers, or at least notlet them be seen by anybody. I confess that if the notion of the earth'smotion is false, all the foundations of my philosophy are too, since itis clearly demonstrated by them. It is so connected with all parts of mytreatise that I could not detach it without rendering the remainderwholly defective. But as I would not, for anything in the world, thatthere should proceed from me a discourse in which there was to be foundthe least word which might be disapproved of by the church, so would Irather suppress it altogether than let it appear mutilated."

Descartes' independence of thought did not tend to revolt, as he hadproved: in publishing his _Discourse on Method_ he halted at thethreshold of Christianism without laying his hand upon the sanctuary.Making a clean sweep of all he had learned, and tearing himself free,by a supreme effort, from the whole tradition of humanity, he resolved"never to accept anything as true until he recognized it to be clearlyso, and not to comprise amongst his opinions anything but what presenteditself so clearly and distinctly to his mind that he could have nooccasion to hold it in doubt." In this absolute isolation of his mind,without past and without future, Descartes, first of all assured of hisown personal existence by that famous axiom, "Cogito, ergo sum" (I think,therefore I am), drew from it, as a necessary consequence, the fact ofthe separate existence of soul and of body; passing oft by a sort ofinternal revelation which he called innate ideas, he came to the pinnacleof his edifice, concluding for the existence of a God from the notion ofthe infinite impressed on the human soul. A laborious reconstruction ofa primitive and simple truth which the philosopher could not, for asingle moment, have banished from his mind all the while that he waslaboring painfully to demonstrate it.

By a tacit avowal of the weakness of the human mind, the speculations ofDescartes stopped short at death. He had hopes, however, of retardingthe moment of it. "I felt myself alive," he said, at forty years of age,"and, examining myself with as much care as if I were a rich old man, Ifancied I was even farther from death than I had been in my youth." Hehad yielded to the entreaties of Queen Christina of Sweden, who hadpromised him an observatory, like that of Tycho Brahe. He was delicate,and accustomed to follow a regimen adapted to his studies. "O flesh!"he wrote to Gassendi, whose philosophy contradicted his own: "O idea!"answered Gassendi. The climate of Stockholm was severe; Descartes caughtinflammation of the lungs; he insisted upon doctoring himself, and diedon the 11th of February, 1650. "He didn't want to resist death," saidhis friends, not admitting that their master's will could be vanquishedby death itself. His influence remained for a long while supreme overhis age. Bossuet and Fenelon were Cartesians. "I think, therefore Iam," wrote Madame de Sevigne to her daughter. "I think of you tenderly,therefore I love you; I think only of you in that manner, therefore Ilove you only." Pascal alone, though adopting to a certain extentDescartes' form of reasoning, foresaw the excess to which other mindsless upright and less firm would push the system of the greatphilosopher. "I cannot forgive Descartes," he said; "he would haveliked, throughout his philosophy, to be able to do without God, but hecould not help making Him give just a flick to set the world in motion;after that he didn't know what to do with God." A severe, but a truesaying; Descartes had required everything of pure reason; he had felt aforeshadowing of the infinite and the unknown without daring to ventureinto them. In the name of reason, others have denied the infinite andthe unknown. Pascal was wiser and bolder when, with St. Augustine, he